OPINION: NM can't accept health care status quo

Coming down the sea cliff, I knew something was wrong. My husband and I were on our last day of a babymoon in Lanai, Hawaii, last month when we decided to do a short 1.5-mile hike along the ocean. Coming from Albuquerque to sea level, it shouldn’t have been hard. But suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

We went to the island clinic where my heart rate was over 220. Since I was six-months pregnant at the time the local doctor was concerned and had me medevac’d to Honolulu. Three days — and a dozen heart tests — later the doctors told me I had supraventricular tachycardia, SVT, a condition where the electric signals in the heart start to swing around the heart instead of up and down, causing a very rapid heart rate.

The condition is usually pretty mild, but more fluid around the heart during pregnancy can make it worse. I have to say, my husband and I were both so impressed with the health care in Hawaii. They were thorough, triple checking everything for both me and the baby, compassionate and incredibly knowledgeable. They put me on beta blockers to prevent another incident and recommended I find a cardiologist in Albuquerque.

Find a cardiologist in Albuquerque. Now that is easier said than done. I moved to New Mexico from Washington, D.C., five years ago and I still don’t have a primary care physician. I joined a waiting list for one eight months ago. They say it’ll probably be another 16 months. I had to find a local endocrinologist ahead of my pregnancy because I have a thyroid disorder that must be closely monitored during pregnancy. I was told it would take 2-3 years and if some friends at UNM hadn’t pulled some strings, I wouldn’t have been able to get pregnant in New Mexico for years until I’d finally gotten to see an endocrinologist. So, I was trepidacious about being able to quickly find a cardiologist here.

My perinatologist made a call and got me in to see a cardiologist at Lovelace’s Heart Institute. But the soonest appointment was almost two months away in the second week of August. Now, keep in mind, two months in the life of a pregnancy is eons, especially when you’re on beta blockers and told to not exert yourself lest you provoke a cardiac incident which could lead to sudden heart failure that could kill both you and your baby.

I called and asked to be put on a waiting list for all five cardiologists with the specialty to treat SVT. Nothing has come up.

The 30-day prescription to the beta blockers that the Hawaii doctors said would be essential to preventing another episode ended last Monday. I called Lovelace but they refused to fill the prescription because their doctors had yet to see me. Call the prescribing doctor, they told me. I called Queen’s Hospital in Hawaii, and they said: Sorry we can’t prescribe out of state. So, I called Lovelace back. Call your primary care physician, they said. I don’t have one, I responded. Oh, too bad. You’ll just have to get it renewed when you come in to see your cardiologist in August.

I’m sure there are all kinds of rules that say you can’t prescribe meds to patients you haven’t seen. I’m sure it’s a liability. But isn’t it also a liability to have a seven-months pregnant cardiac patient go off the “essential” beta blockers leaving her at risk for a cardiac episode that could kill her and her baby for nearly three weeks because you’re short staffed and won’t renew a prescription?

Finally, in desperation, I called my perinatologist who, though it’s not really their specialty or purview, called in the prescription.

To say that there are holes in our care system is an understatement. Hawaii’s health care felt like an iron vault, secure and everything triple checked. By comparison, in the five years I’ve lived in New Mexico, I feel like I’m consistently falling through the cracks of this state’s Swiss cheese health care system. And if it’s happening to me, I can’t imagine what someone who doesn’t have two hours on a workday to call four different doctors in two states to get a simple prescription renewed.

If this had happened while I was living in D.C., I would’ve simply sent a message in my One Medical app to a provider, who would’ve called in the script to the nearest pharmacy. I used One Medical for more than a decade, and they called in scripts for me everywhere from Bagram Air Force Base to Paris during the Charlie Hebdo attacks to the Australian outback. But because New Mexico refuses to sign on to compacts allowing doctors to work across state borders virtually — compacts that 40 states have already signed onto — using One Medical is impossible here. Indeed, for all that I love my perinatologist, they don’t even have a virtual portal, so everything must go via phone or in person. The compacts, long backed by Kirtland and the U.S. military here, which spends $2 million annually flying their people out of state to see specialists, are being blocked by Senate Judiciary Chairman Joseph Cervantes. When asked by the Journal why, he said because they impinge on “New Mexico’s sovereignty.”

I spoke with Sen. Cervantes, a career trial lawyer, by phone and he explained to me that the compacts “will never pass” because they take away New Mexico’s ability to certify providers — they’re run by private companies that do the certifications — and because they limit liability for the virtual providers. Limit liability — New Mexico has some of the highest medical malpractice premiums in the nation, one of a few reasons why it’s so hard to find doctors here. God forbid we do anything that might impinge on trial lawyers’ ability to file suit.

I’m told that state legislators are in denial that there’s a problem with health care in this state, that the problems are exaggerated. Dear legislators: let me tell you there is a huge problem. Of the dozens of ex-pat friends I’ve made who also moved here during Covid from places like D.C., San Francisco, Chicago, even Omaha — our No. 1 gripe with this beautiful state is how bad the health care is here and how long the wait times are to see primary care physicians and specialists. I have friends who have lived here for five years who drive back to Philadelphia twice a year to see their old doctors. I have other friends in Santa Fe, who after their first experience being hospitalized in New Mexico, packed up and moved back to Chicago. Even worse, I have friends who are lifelong New Mexicans who acknowledge how bad health care here is but shrug it off as simply a part of life to be accepted like the rising of the sun and taxes.

As someone who cares passionately about New Mexico, I cannot be so sanguine about the situation. I choose to be here, building The Albuquerque Journal and helping the community, and I choose not to accept the status quo. Because if I do, one day this broken system will lead to another assured part of life for someone I care about, or maybe even me: death.

Jay Newton-Small is the executive editor and vice president of the Albuquerque Journal.