St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison is among 21 Wisconsin health centers fined in recent years for failing to comply with a state law requiring facilities to offer emergency contraceptives to rape victims.
A state law put into effect in 2008 requires hospital staff to provide victims with information about emergency contraceptives, let them know the drugs are available within the facility and dispense them upon request.
St. Mary’s Hospital and 21 other health centers did not comply with that state law, a Wisconsin Department of Health Services spokesperson told The Daily Cardinal in an email Monday.
St. Mary’s was fined $7,500 in April 2015, after an unannounced survey conducted by Wisconsin DHS found several incidents of noncompliance with the 2008 law.
According to a document released Sunday by the Wisconsin State Journal, three different sexual assault victims who went to the hospital between April and December 2014 did not report having received information on or access to emergency contraceptives from staff.
“Based on record review and interview, the facility failed to provide 3 of 3 sexual assault patients the option to receive emergency contraception at the facility,” the document says. “This deficiency has the potential to affect all sexual assault patient receiving treatment at this hospital.”
The document includes a response from an unnamed St. Mary’s emergency room director, who told DHS that the hospital does not provide patients with information about emergency contraceptives due to its religious affiliation.
St. Mary’s did not immediately respond to The Daily Cardinal’s request for comment, but hospital spokesperson Kim Sveum told the State Journal that citing religious affiliation as reasoning behind the noncompliances was “inaccurate.”
In June 2015, St. Mary’s revised its policies to meet state law requirements on patient information on and access to emergency contraceptives, according to the document.
DHS spokesperson Elizabeth Goodsitt told The Daily Cardinal that all citations have since been followed up on and determined as having been corrected.
Twenty-one other hospitals throughout Wisconsin have also been cited for noncompliance with the emergency contraceptive statute since 2008.
