Learn the shocking truth about how hospitals and doctors in Texas, not patients and their families, get to make the final decision as to whether health care continues or ends--ultimately meaning that they decide whether the patient lives or dies.
Resources
Video: Hospital Death Panels in Texas
Painter Law Firm's 'Surviving Hospitals' website on medical futility law in Texas
Transcript of the video :
Did you know Texas law is the worst in the nation when it comes to protecting patient rights when they may be coming to the end of life?
Tucked away within the Advance Directives Act of 1999 is a little-known provision that gives hospital committees and not the patients or their families the right to determine when healthcare is to end and when a patient is going to live or die. And all it takes to start this process is for a doctor to ask a hospital committee to review his opinion that further healthcare care is medically futile.
Now these committees are typically composed of the doctor’s friends and colleagues, so I think we both knows how these decisions often get rubberstamped.
Once the committee gets involved you (the patient or family member) only get 48 hours to prepare for the meeting to present your side. And if the committee does when they often do—and rubberstamp the doctors decision—you only get 10 days to find your loved one another place to care for them or at the conclusion of the 10 days your loved one gets no food water or care.
That means they die.
Most people are shocked to find out that it is not them or their family members who make the decision about whether they are going to live or die a hospital setting, but instead it is the hospital committee and the doctors.
If you ever find yourself in this terrible situation please contact the Texas medical malpractice attorneys at Painter Law Firm, at 281-580-8800.
