By Dawn McMullan

East Dallas Persistent Women releases its “Healthy Skepticism: The Inadequacy of ‘Healthy Texas Women’ in 2018” today. While we are proud of the work we have done, we are saddened by the results. Our survey finds that the people in charge of the Healthy Texas Women program are lying to Texas women.

Here are the highlights:

• A statistically representative survey of 54 counties in Texas shows 66.31% of providers listed on the HTW website as HTW providers do not provide care through Healthy Texas Women.

• In Dallas County, 81.9% of providers listed on the HTW website as HTW providers do not provide care through Healthy Texas Women. Of the 1,043 listed providers in Dallas County, only 505 are unique names.

• In Harris County, 70% of providers listed on the HTW website as HTW providers do not provide care through Healthy Texas Women. Of the 1,679 listed providers in Harris County, 1,323 were unique names.

• In addition to duplicate names, numbers listed led us to an anesthesiology group, an orthopedic surgeon group, a dermatologist, an oncologist, a radiology department, a mental health specialist, a surgeon, a cancer institute, an ophthalmologist, pediatricians, a city employee clinic, several ER/urgent care doctors, and the private line of someone named Louis. Some were no longer taking new patients. One said they used to take HTW patients but the state is not giving them money anymore. Sometimes we stayed on hold for up to 15 minutes and never got through. One person hung up on us when we asked about HTW. Sometimes we tried and never even got to a person to put us on hold.

For more information, please see our detailed report linked above.