About

Our Story

Patients for change began with my Dad. Dad truly enjoyed life. He was always smiling and he made others smile.

Dad was an engineer by trade and an artist by passion. His sketches, drawings, and paintings grace the walls of so many loving homes all over the world. He was a genius with words, a beautiful writer, the family comedian, a trusted handyman, and a burgeoning karaoke artist. His comic book collection is the stuff of legends, and his love of movies and Elvis were equally iconic. He would crack us all up with his perfect impressions and his laughing “fits” were contagiously hilarious.

Everyone who knew Dad loved him. He was truly the best of the best – gentle, kind, funny, courageous, and strong. His heart was big and welcoming. He was a pillar of our family and a beacon in our community.

We lost Dad to a combination of things. Yes, Dad had cancer. And it may have eventually taken his life. But Dad’s early and unexpected death was largely due to delays in treatment, mistakes in testing, and a failure in care at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

This was shocking to us.

MD Anderson was supposed to be “the best cancer center in the world.” It was not. (Read the letter I sent to MD Anderson’s CEO Peter Pisters).

In the days and weeks following Dad’s death, after I shared his and our family’s story, I was overwhelmed by the amount of people who had similarly awful experiences. Many of them at MD Anderson. But also many at other “leading hospitals” around the United States.

How could these hospitals be top-ranked, yet consistently underdeliver on patient care? Those two things just don’t compute.

So, my family and I have created Patients for Change to begin the long process of correcting that contradiction, and to prevent other Moms and Dads from experiencing what ours did. Our mission is to help ensure that every patient is treated like family.

Our Action Plan

1. Our Loved Ones: Sharing the stories and experiences of patients and their families at MD Anderson and other “top ranked” hospitals around the United States.

2. Patient Care: Raising awareness of the patient care failures and downskilling deficiencies that are plaguing MD Anderson and other “top” institutions around the country.

3. Hospital Staff: Raising awareness of the specific doctors, nurses, PA’s, executives, and staff members who are failing to meet the standard of acceptable patient care.

4. Ratings: Engaging governing boards, non-profits, and awards platforms to lower the ratings of institutions who do not provide appropriate patient care.

5. Rankings: Developing our own ranking system that focuses on the qualitative and quantitative metrics that are most important to patients and their families.

6. Community: Activating thousands of affected patients and families to share their honest experiences via ratings and reviews of hospitals, physicians, and staff on all available platforms, including Google, Yelp, WebMD, RateMDs, Zocdoc, Vitals, Healthgrades, and a future platform we are creating.

7. Policy: Driving policy changes at the local, state, and federal government level to tighten medical malpractice laws and hold hospitals, physicians, and staff more accountable for their actions and inactions.

8. Technology: Leveraging technology to excavate the millions of personal experiences of patients nationwide and centralize them in an open and accessible social format.

9. Data: Demanding transparency in patient outcome statistics, including recovery rate, remission rates, and survival rates from high-revenue healthcare institutions.

10. Accountability: Spotlighting the institutions that meet the mark and miss the mark through patient narratives and investigative pieces.

Get Involved

We need your help to help our loved ones. To join our mission, please contact us.