DALLAS, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Nina Pham, represented by attorneys at Aldous \ Walker, contracted Ebola after treating a patient with the virus-causing disease at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas Hospital. During the Ebola crisis, Presbyterian Hospital's corporate owner, Texas Health Resources (THR), claimed that it wanted to get to the bottom of how Nina and another nurse contracted the deadly condition while caring for Presbyterian's patient. In fact, since that time, THR corporate executives have promoted themselves as speakers willing to share what they learned with other hospitals and hospital systems across the nation.
Despite THR's public proclamations of its intent to act with the utmost transparency, the corporation has refused to reveal any information from the root cause analysis it performed to find out how Presbyterian's nurses contracted Ebola. Root cause analysis is essentially a process for investigating and identifying the root causes of a particular event to help safe guard from or prevent future occurrences.
THR maintains that it delivered on its promise to disclose how Ebola spread from the patient to two of Presbyterian Hospital's nurses. Attorneys at Aldous \ Walker say THR fell short. After Pham and the other nurse contracted Ebola, two reviews were conducted: (1) a root cause analysis conducted by THR personnel; and (2) an expert panel report, conducted by an independent research panel.
According to THR, the contents of the root cause analysis are confidential under Texas law. Because THR is refusing to comment on the root cause analysis, no one knows whether it revealed information that differs from the independent panel's review.
In a court filing, attorneys Charla Aldous and Brent Walker stated, "THR is refusing to adhere to its own promises of transparency. The court should order them to do so."
Pham and another nurse treated a Liberian patient, Thomas Duncan, who eventually died of complications relating to Ebola in October 2014. Pham filed her lawsuit against THR in March 2015. The suit accuses the THR of failing to prepare hospitals in the THR system for Ebola – a known and impending medical crisis. It also accuses the corporation of ignoring Pham's request to have no information released about her while she was being treated for Ebola.
THR has denied all allegations presented in the suit, claiming that Pham and other health care workers were properly trained, and that Pham herself had previously worked using the same protective gear while caring for other patients with infections in the ICU. Pham, however, is not an infectious disease nurse, and prior to Duncan, had never cared for someone with an infectious disease like Ebola.
Unlike Duncan, Pham did survive Ebola, but she lives with the anxiety of not knowing how the disease and the experimental drugs used to treat her will affect her in the long term.
Pham wants to know the truth about what happened to her. THR's efforts to limit discovery about what caused her injuries is stifling that pursuit.
Whether THR must provide more information about its Ebola investigation is a matter before District Judge Martin Hoffman, who is presiding over this case. Trial is slated for October.
The attorneys at Aldous \ Walker are passionate about holding corporations accountable in pursuit of protecting their clients' most vital interests. THR says it wants to act with the utmost transparency and candor so that health care providers worldwide can learn from what happened at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas hospital, and while THR believes it has explored every possibility as to what went wrong, the corporate hospital system refuses to disclose the contents of its root cause analysis.
Until a judge orders THR to do so, Pham, the health care community, and the public will be in the dark as to whether the root cause analysis differed from the information THR released to the public.
To read the full piece as it appeared in The Dallas Morning News, visit Ebola nurse Nina Pham's attorneys say hospital won't reveal details of how disease spread. You can contact Aldous \ Walker, LLP at (214) 307-6307 or visit their site at http://www.aldouslaw.com/.
Case Number: DC-15-02252.
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SOURCE Aldous \ Walker, LLP
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