Check Your Privilege — Dispelling Misconceptions About Abortion Care and Hospital Admitting Privileges

March 23, 2016

(Medscape) – Although it has not been the central focus of much of the coverage of the case to date, the issue of admitting privileges is integral to determining the legitimacy of the claim that H.B. 2 is an improvement on patient safety for abortion care or an attempt to restrict access to abortions by creating unnecessary standards for providers. But does the legislation reflect the reality in how admitting privileges actually work? It is on this point that the Society for Hospital Medicine (SHM) and the Society of Ob/Gyn Hospitalists (SOGH) elected to submit an amicus brief to the Supreme Court to clarify what they felt were important gaps in information about the process of admitting patients and the potential role of hospitalists and hospitals in postprocedural abortion care.