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The Law Did Not Work--Thoughts on Andrea Clark and Yenlang Vo

Jerri Lynn Ward, attorney for Andrea Clark's family writes about the flawed Texas Futile Care Statute, which nearly ended the lives of two clients.

Jerri writes, "For two weeks I have carried responsibility in the legal realm for the lives of two women whom attending physicians and ethics committees have decided should not receive life-sustaining treatment. This has been a heavy burden--although I cannot compare my ordeal to that of the families and patients."

"The reality [re: Texas Futile Care Statuted] is that once a hospital labels a patient as a futile case, other hospitals will rarely, if at all, take the patient. Specialty hospitals (long-term acute care hospitals) will not take them because the patient has no discharge plan (plan for going to a lower level of care) A person that a hospital has written off as futile is not going to have a discharge plan. A nursing home, more likely than not, will have insufficient resources (dialysis and respirator care for instance) to care for such patients."

"The Texas Statute, at the heart of all this, came about because the hospitals begin, independently, to create protocols for withdrawing treatment during the early to mid 1990's--there is an article in a 1996 JAMA issue about that. A coalition of doctors and hospitals came up with a Bill that would give health providers immunity or "safe harbor" from lawsuits or criminal and licensure liability if the provider followed the ethics committee protocol. The bill gave only 3 days for a transfer."

Texas Advance Directives Blog


This post first appeared on In Memory Of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, please read the originial post: here

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The Law Did Not Work--Thoughts on Andrea Clark and Yenlang Vo

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