HBO Host Special Screening of “Bleed Out” with Producer Ilan Arboleda, Producer/Director Steve Burrows, editor Jill Schweitzer and Dr. Marty Makary on December 12, 2018 in New York City. “Bleed Out” is a freighting look at the third leading cause of death in America, medical error.
HBO Documentary Film Bleed Out is a freighting look at the third leading cause of death in America, medical error. Comedy writer and director Steve Burrows documents the medical and legal nightmare he and his family endured when his mother went into the hospital for a routine hip surgery and came out in a coma with permanent brain damage.
It all started when Steve’s mother injured her hip in a biking accident. From there it quickly escalated into a living hell no one could have imagined. What will anger you the most is that all the suffering Steve’s mother endured was completely avoidable. None of this had to happen. None of this would have happened if her doctors and nurses would have just simply cared more. What occurred was gross, sloppy, and unapologetic medical negligence.
When medical errors occur at the fault of the doctor, some form of accountability and restitution to alleviate the pain and suffering of the victim is expected. But instead, Steve found a system purposely designed to protect doctors, not patients. The entire system was stacked against Steve and his family from the very beginning. I was astonished to watch the uphill battle Steve had to fight just get the Aurora Health Care system in Wisconsin to admit basic and obvious wrongdoing.
As the film takes us through a whirlwind of medical and legal chaos — Bleed Out reminds us that there is a human being at the center of all of this— Judie, Steve’s mother. Judie had a rich and full life before this medical horror halted everything to a stop and took everything from her. Aurora Health robbed Judie of her future. The healthcare system failed her and will continue to fail others if gross medical negligence remains unchecked.
Director Steve Burrows (left) Dr. Marty Makary (middle) and CreativeChaos producer, Ilan Arboleda (right)
(Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for HBO)
In the documentary, Steve interviews Dr. Marty Makary M.D., a surgeon at Johns Hopkins and author of “Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care” On Wednesday night, Dr. Marty Makary attended the screening of Bleed Out to further discuss healthcare in this country: “I have this opinion that when we go to medical school, we learn about medicine but we don’t know squat about healthcare.”
“There’s a grassroots movement of doctors, millennials, students, residences, saying enough is enough. We went into medicine to help people…this is a gigantic industry loaded with middlemen and price gouging. And so this project The Price We Pay project and this new Improving Wisely Project that our students are leading are trying to get hospitals to take a pledge: you don’t sue patients who can’t afford to pay, end price gouging, get some simple price transparency…and if it’s the hospitals fault — they don’t charge the patient.” says Makary
With medical error being the third leading causes of death in America, chances are what happened in Bleed Out could happen to any one of us or someone we love. Bleed Out is a sobering wake-up call not just for the healthcare system but for patients and their families as well.
“I learned a simple thing early on. I was intimated…I blindly trusted doctors and nurses in hospitals…Everybody needs an advocate. We all know people who get sick and we get sick. And if you’re back in the emergency room, you’re not asking questions, you’re like ‘stop the pain’…you need someone whether it’s a spouse or a friend or a wife or a brother, somebody to help you ask these questions and advocate for you.” says Steve Burrows
Ilan Arboleda, primary producer of CreativeChaos, also attended the screening last night with hopes that this film will become an important call to action:
“Apart of what we do at our company at CreativeChaos is focusing on films that have social action and have the ability to move the dial of the conversation. So, it’s our hope that with the help of a platform like HBO, as well as our, continuing to take the film around the country and partnering with groups that are focused on this, that we can continue to get the message out there and the film itself can be a catalyst and be part of that conversation. So we’re hoping that you will also all spread the word here as well.”
Bleed Out Debuts on Monday, December 17, 8 PM ET on HBO Go and HBO Now
Bleed Out is an HBO Documentary Films presentation of a CreativeChaos and The Burrows of Hollywood film in association with Impact Partners; written and directed by Steve Burrows; producers, Ilan Arboleda, Steve Burrows, Tom Donahue; executive producers, Dan Cogan, Jenny Raskin, Geralyn Dreyfous, Steve Edwards; co-producers, Margo Burrows, Jessicya Materano. For HBO: executive producers, Nancy Abraham, and Sheila Nevins