Between 300,000 and 400,000 Americans die from preventable medical errors every year. That number has been climbing since the first major studies came out in the 1970s. And yet there is no mandatory reporting requirement for some of the most egregious errors that happen inside hospitals, including operating on the wrong body part, leaving a foreign object inside a patient, or setting a patient on fire in the operating room.
In this episode, Kay Van Wey sits down with her law partner Luke Metzler, a birth injury attorney who has taken depositions across the country and written a scholarly article for the University of North Texas Law Review titled Hospital Negligence and How to Avoid Being the Next Victim, for one of the most substantive conversations this podcast has had about what is actually going wrong inside hospitals, why the system keeps failing patients in the same ways over and over again, and what medical malpractice litigation actually does to make healthcare safer.
By watching this episode you will understand:
What the data actually shows about how dangerous hospitals are and why the real number is likely far higher than any study has captured
Why there is no mandatory reporting requirement for some of the most serious medical errors in the country
Why the aviation industry's approach to safety is the model healthcare refuses to follow
Why checklists and timeouts exist for wrong site surgery and why patients still get operated on in the wrong place anyway
The most common and preventable causes of birth injuries including HIE and cerebral palsy
How medical malpractice litigation drives real systemic change inside hospitals
Why the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology publicly stated its goal was to create literature to defend lawsuits and what that means for patients
2:00 Why Almost Every Medical Error Is a System Failure, Not Just a Bad Doctor
5:00 Luke's Article: Hospital Negligence and How to Avoid Being the Next Victim
6:30 Are Hospitals Actually Dangerous? What Decades of Data Show
12:00 Why We Don't Know the True Number of Preventable Medical Deaths
19:00 Why Hospitals Self-Regulate and Why That Is a Problem
24:00 The Science of Patient Safety and Why It Is Not Being Applied
29:00 Birth Injuries: The Most Common Preventable Causes of HIE and Cerebral Palsy
34:00 What Medical Malpractice Litigation Actually Does to Make Healthcare Safer
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Have you or someone you love been affected by a preventable medical error? Tell us your story in the comments.
At Van Wey & Metzler Law Firm in Dallas, Texas, Kay Van Wey and her team advocate for families affected by medical malpractice, hospital negligence, birth injuries, surgical errors, preventable medical harm, and unsafe healthcare systems.
What is AdvoKAYte: Holding Healthcare Accountable?
Most people first heard of Kay Van Wey through the shocking true story of Dr. Death—the infamous Dallas neurosurgeon who maimed and killed patients. Kay stood up to him and the system that enabled him, fighting for the people whose lives he shattered. That case made headlines around the world, but for Kay, it was never about the spotlight. It was about the patients—the mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons—who deserved answers, justice, and dignity.
Now, on AdvoKAYte: Holding Healthcare Accountable, Kay brings that same passion to a new mission: exposing a healthcare system that too often puts profits ahead of patient safety.
With more than 40 years of experience as a medical malpractice attorney, Kay has seen firsthand the devastating impact of preventable medical errors—and uncovered their root causes. She calls out dangerous physicians, profit-driven hospitals, fraudulent schemes, and a system designed to keep patients in the dark.
A lawsuit against a negligent provider can bring justice for the victims, but Kay is fighting for something bigger. She will always stand with individuals and families harmed by medical errors—but she is on a mission to reform the broken healthcare system that is vital to all of us... patients.
This podcast is about more than cases—it’s about change. Patients need a voice. Their voices must be amplified—so loudly and so clearly—that politicians can no longer ignore them. Only then can we demand accountability, reform the system, and make healthcare safer for everyone.
Because as Kay learned from Dr. Death—and countless other cases—the problems are fixable. What’s missing is the will to fix them. And that starts here.
Knowledge is power. Strength comes in numbers. It’s time for patients to matter more than profits—and for preventable medical errors to end.
