InsureMe Agent Blog: Peculiar Postings: Up to 700 Placentas Collected by Insurance-Financed Institute Without Patients' Knowledge

If the title of this post has you saying "What the...", I assure you, you're not alone. But wait, it gets weirder.

According to a February 13 article by the Insurance Journal, up to 700 women in Oregon, Washington and California were not told that an institute financed by the insurance industry kept their placentas after giving birth, in efforts to protect doctors and medical institutions from potential lawsuits.

The Oregonian reported the story in its Sunday edition that the Cascadia Placenta Registry stored the placentas in question from 1996 to 2003, to help combat the exponential growth in malpractice insurance rates that have prevented some doctors and hospitals to deliver babies. According to the Insurance Journal, settlements or verdicts can reach millions of dollars in cases where children injured during childbirth need care 24-hours a day—including fetuses who've suffered brain damage due to lack of oxygen.

The kicker? Cascadia appears to be the only organization of its kind criticized for failing to inform patients that their placentas were being collected. As a result, says the Insurance Journal, some learned about the placenta registry only after they'd filed lawsuits regarding the injury or death of their babies after birth.

Why collect and analyze placentas in the first place?

The Insurance Journal explains that analyzing the tissue can often show signs of other illnesses or infections that would cause injury or death to a fetus—which can be used to rule out malpractice claims.

The Oregonian illustrated this point with the story of a woman who'd been told shortly before her baby was due that the excess amniotic fluid in her womb put her baby's life at risk. When she felt the fetus stop moving a week later, she contacted her physicians who assured her all was well. Nonetheless, she drove herself to the hospital and her daughter was delivered by emergency C-section. And, shortly after birth, the little girl suffered a seizure that's left her unable to walk, talk or eat without the help of a feeding tube.

Meanwhile, the Oregon hospital sent the mother's placenta to Cascadia, where a pathologist tested the tissue and issued a report stating that the child's cerebral palsy was a result of poor blood flow to the fetus, not improper physician care.

The Insurance Journal reports that the Oregon hospitals involved in the controversy have defended their involvement with Cascadia, saying that the placentas were collected for "patient care". Furthermore, they contend that patients gave named hospitals authority to perform any necessary pathological exams by way of hospital consent forms.

Not so, says leading medical ethicist, Arthur Caplan. He said it's not enough to rely on a patient's general consent when it comes to collecting tissues for potential lawsuits.

"If you're going to take things from patients—extract DNA or use them as potential sources of defense in litigation—subjects have an absolute right to know that and must consent or not," Caplan stated. "To have insurance companies collecting this stuff is very problematic."

To me this falls a little beyond "problematic" and more into the realm of disturbing, but maybe I'm just sensitive. Either way, it'll be interesting to see how this one turns out.

Both Google and MSN turn up next to nothing for "Cascadia Placenta Registry", save for a few interesting threads from what looks to be a pathology message board. The Registry's Web site (placenta.org) seems to be defunct. Perhaps they caved under the scrutiny and took it down? I'll keep my eye on it.

[View the original source of the story from The Oregonian here.]