Thread by @DSiPaint

🧵 This pseudonymous individual claims to work in emergency medicine & has been outright admitting to falsifying patients’ medical records to protect from liability of botched induced abortions or complications from induced abortions.

1/

Correct med coding is very important for patients to receive proper treatment, as proceeding w/ incorrect treatment or delaying proper treatment can endanger patients’ lives.

There are distinct ICD-10-CM diagnosis codes for several types of abortive outcomes to pregnancies:

2/

O00 Ectopic pregnancy
O01 Hydatidiform mole
O02 Other abnormal products of conception
O03 Spontaneous abortion (miscarriage)
O04 Complications following induced abortion
O07 Failed attempted induced abortion
O08 Complications following ectopic and molar pregnancy

3/

Of those codes, O04 & O07 relate to botched induced abortions. This supposed medical practitioner claims symptoms are no different than those of O03 (miscarriage); however, that is often not true, plus similar symptoms could even be an undiagnosed O00 (ectopic pregnancy).

4/

Why would a supposed medical practitioner explicitly falsify medical records?

The claim is that women could be charged w/ crimes for receiving abortions (ICD-10-CM Z33.2); however, liability would fall on providers.

Nearly all states don’t even criminalize self-inductions.

5/

States that do criminalize self-inductions mostly do so after viability or as components of felonious actions, like practicing medicine w/o a license or black market acquisition of controlled substances. There’s also the crime of improper disposal of human remains past ~20wk.

6/

If the women who receive induced abortions aren’t the targets of criminality, then that leaves the providers. It is common for providers to explicitly tell women to lie if/when they have complications. This breaks the chain-of-custody in liability.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

7/

This deception leads to increased complications & multiple follow-up hospital visits to resolve what could have been easily identified if the truth was told in the beginning.

8/

I briefly mentioned undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies: This is a growing concern w/ telemed abortions (or abortifacient trafficking) in which a woman can receive Mifepristone or other abortifacients w/o verifying intrauterine pregnancy first. (MO had a bill on this last year.)

9/

Since the symptoms of chemical abortions & ruptured ectopic pregnancies can be very similar, a woman could be internally bleeding but not seek medical care, as the symptoms could be mistaken for what’s expected in an induced abortion.

10/

The CDC’s abortion surveillance program estimates ~6 women/yr die from induced abortion among voluntary reporting that covers ~75% of the US. The actual annual deaths are undoubtedly much higher if nearly 2/3 ER visits are miscoded as miscarriages.

11/

cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/6…

The deceptive practices by abortion providers should concern everyone, no matter the views on legality of elective induced abortions. Sadly, however, there are those (like the individual in the initial tweet) who don’t care about women dying, as long as the ends are met.

12/12

This abortionist is a prime example of what I discussed in this thread. She wants to hide from liability for her botched abortion procedures. Initially, the ER staff may not be able to discover what actually happened, but when they do, it could be too late to save the patient.