AUSTIN, Texas — The House Committee on Public Health on Monday discussed a bill aimed at reducing the backlog of maternal death cases that need review.
House Bill 713, authored by State Rep. Donna Howard (D-Austin), would exempt nurses who are looking at cases as part of the Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee from having to report instances of misconduct.
Back in 2022, the committee missed its report deadline because members were still reviewing cases from 2019. Howard says part of the problem is information has to be redacted before nurses can review cases to ensure nurses can’t be held responsible for not reporting misconduct.
“On average, the department says they spend 45 hours, on average, doing the redaction. And then another 20 hours doing the review. But some of the redactions can take up to 250 hours. This is an extremely lengthy process,” Howard said.
Howard said Texas is the only state that requires information to be redacted for such a committee.
The House passed this bill last session, but it ran out of time in the Senate.
On Monday, HB 713 was left pending in committee, which means lawmakers will decide whether to move forward with it at a later date.
Other bills aimed at staying caught up on case review
The Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee’s most recent report, released in September 2024, looked at deaths from 2020.
Last year, the committee announced it would skip deaths from 2022 and 2023 to do a more timely review of cases from 2024. This sparked outrage from Texans who said skipping those first years that abortion was banned in the state would cover the impact of the ban.
State Rep. Armando Walle (D-Houston) has filed House Bill 2117, which would require the committee to annually review cases from the previous year.