But some of those people weren’t just innocent victims. They were driving drunk.
By some estimates, 50 percent of the people brought to the ER are legally too drunk to drive.
What’s more, many of those drivers are never charged, because the police are never called.
“It’s a huge problem. It’s an absolutely huge problem,” Dr. Brent King said.
It’s a huge problem that defies what you might assume happens to drunk drivers involved in crashes.
“And then the person will be treated and released and we’ve got nothing to show for it,” Harris County Assistant District Attorney Brent Mayr said.
Prosecutors said ER doctors are not required to report a drunk driver, nor do they have to run blood alcohol tests.
“One of the first things we want to know as prosecutors: Was alcohol involved? And we get the records and there’s no blood alcohol testing,” Mayr said.
So why would the doctors not run a test?
“All across the country, trauma surgeons have been reluctant to screen patients for blood alcohol concentration,” Dr. Larry Gentilello of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas said.
Gentilello is one of the nation’s leading experts on alcohol abuse.
His research, along with a study he conducted for the Texas Legislature, found that hospitals might have a financial incentive to keep someone’s drunkenness a secret.
Under a 60-year-old federal statute, insurance companies can deny payment for treatment of injuries caused by intoxication.
That means doctors and hospitals wouldn’t get paid for helping the patient. That may be incentive enough to keep any proof of intoxication out of medical records.
“All it does is make doctors not test,” Gentilello said. “We shouldn’t be penalized for doing our jobs by silly laws.”
But there is another issue at hand: Do doctors have any business playing cop?
“That’s not our job. We’re not the police. Unless society wants to make us a screener, just as they do with child abuse, just as they do with reportable illnesses,” King said.
Six states actually do require hospitals to report drunk drivers.
Eleven states have laws requiring insurance companies to pay for injuries, even if they’re caused by alcohol.
Texas doesn’t fall into either one of those groups.
In fact, similar bills have been defeated three times in Austin.
“It’s just allowing these drunk drivers to get back on the road again,” Mayr said.
Until changes are made, drunk drivers will continue to beat DWI charges by leaving the scene in an ambulance.
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