OKLAHOMA CITY — A new bill filed in the State House aims to safeguard patients’ rights during their treatment in Oklahoma hospitals. FOX23 learned that the inspiration for the bill came from one family’s struggles with the hospital system.
“There’s so many things wrong with the system, and we need something in state law that hospitals are required to follow,” said Gerald Brand.
Brand, from Oklahoma City, is collaborating with state lawmakers on the bill, which is named in honor of his wife. It is called the “Lori Brand Patient Bill of Rights.”
The bill seeks to create a legal standard for patient rights that all hospitals must adhere to.
Brand explained that the bill’s origin dates back to when his wife was hospitalized just before the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020.
“That’s when things started falling apart. She couldn’t communicate with us on the phone. The doctors weren’t communicating, the nurses weren’t communicating properly. I could go on for hours about everything that went wrong,” Brand said.
Brand, who was married to Lori for 40 years before she passed away in 2020 from a rare auto-immune disease, recalled numerous difficulties in treatment and access to medical records.
“It was relapsing polychondritis. She never had COVID at any point. It’s a very rare disease, and when things go wrong, they can escalate quickly. They just didn’t take her condition into account. They had her off her autoimmune medication. They thought she had cirrhosis of the liver. It wasn’t until the last few days of her life that they did a biopsy and determined it wasn’t that. In the last three days, we didn’t know what was happening. We couldn’t get information, and they wouldn’t let us in. They finally called and said we had to make decisions. That was the hardest decision I ever had to make,” Brand shared.
He believes the pandemic revealed a deep issue within the system—one that the bill is intended to address.
The bill, filed last year, passed the House but never received a hearing in the Senate.
“I’m passionate about this out of respect for my wife. I start something, and I don’t give up,” Brand said.
The bill will begin its journey during the next legislative session in early February. Its first hurdle will be passing through a state House committee.
While the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services require hospitals to inform patients of their rights at the start or end of treatment, Brand argues that these are merely federal guidelines. He believes state statutes need to be established as well.