COVID almost killed him. Now a former Texas prison officer is struggling with a system ill-suited to his medical needs.

DALLAS – Danny Cortez fights for every breath.

The oxygen tank is his constant companion after almost fatal COVID-19 the infection left his lungs with severe scarring.

“It’s hard for me to get up. I do not want to eat. I don’t want to do anything,” said Cortez, a former Texas Correctional Officer. “Like you know you have the flu 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

State prison officials sent Cortez across the state to work in a COVID-infected prison. When he contracted the coronavirus and nearly died, he found himself in a system ill-equipped to meet his needs.

When COVID-19 hit of 2020, Cortez was recently married. Both he and his wife Alice worked at a Texas City prison near Houston.

As COVID spread, the penitentiary system moved guards from their prison units to severely understaffed units. The prison ordered the couple to travel across the state to the Clements unit in Amarillo for 14 days in October 2020.

In a memo instructing him to go to the Clements, he wrote: “I did not volunteer.”

“I knew I would get COVID,” he said. “Many of the prisoners had COVID. About 11th day by day I started to feel bad.”

Both he and his wife became ill. Alicia recovered.

He has double pneumonia. Doctors intubated him and gave him a breathing tube. Eventually, he became so ill that the hospital staff wanted to take him off life support, but his wife refused.

As he lay unconscious, Alicia filed a lawsuit with the State Office of Risk Management, or SORM, the government agency that handles workers’ compensation claims for most government employees.

Danny was still in the hospital when the rejection letter arrived on November 12, 2020.

“SORM is currently unable to accept this claim as a compensable injury that occurred in the course of and as part of work,” the letter says.

The letter shocked his wife.

“It actually left a bad taste in my mouth because I just felt like he needed help,” she said. Why would you refuse him?

In the early days of the pandemic, SORM rejected 87% of applications filed by public safety workers.

The records also show that cities, towns and counties have denied about 44% of their COVID workers’ compensation claims. Commercial carriers have rejected about 59% of their claims.

This meant that thousands of workers, including police and firefighters, could not get paid for their COVID treatment.

“These people couldn’t stay at home, so they went out and did their job,” he said. Charlie Wilkisonexecutive director of the United Law Enforcement Association of Texas, or CLEAT.

At a hearing in May, lawmakers asked why SORM denials are so much higher. Representatives of SORM did not explain the difference.

In 2021, they passed a law that said if public safety workers contracted COVID, they were assumed to have been infected at work.

“The goal was to retroactively cover officers exposed to COVID in the line of duty and cover their workers’ compensation,” Wilkison said.

This law allowed public safety workers to file their claims again.

Of the 12,000 state and local public safety workers eligible for the program, only 181 have reapplied. Of these, 113 were accepted.

“One of the criticisms we heard was that they felt that the separation of workers’ compensation and other providers may not have adequately covered people’s right to re-file their claims,” ​​said Rep. Chris Turner, State Arlington, chairman of the committee. control over the implementation of the law.

Wilkison attributes the low score to workers who do not trust the system.

“This system just suppresses them,” he said.

Speculation that a public safety worker contracted COVID-19 at work ends in September. Rep. Turner believes the presumption should be expanded, as does CLEAT.

Wilkison told lawmakers at a hearing in May that some public safety workers are still fighting to get their demands accepted – even the families of the victims.who will continue to be eligible for benefits such as income replacement on behalf of a deceased loved one.

“You have non-compliance, denials and just basic inaction,” Wilkison said at a hearing in May. “The system is designed to end claims.”

Michael Sprain, a workers’ compensation attorney, said lawmakers have done their job. under the assumption that public safety workers contracted COVID at work. He is wrong workers’ compensation officials, which he says are violating the clear intent of the law.

“In most cases, they claim that the person did not have direct contact with someone who was infected with COVID,” he said. “For the presumption to really work, the plaintiff should not bear the burden of proof in the claim. The carrier/self-insured must bear the full burden of proof to disprove the injury.”

Sheriff Abraham Vega of Lynn County, near Lubbock, died of COVID in July 2020. His wife Rachel filed an appeal after his worker’s compensation claim was denied.

However, even after the new law went into effect, her husband’s claim for damages continued to be rejected.

“I had to hire a lawyer,” she said. “I still had a fight to go through.”

The judge recently ruled in her favor. She is still fighting to have his death recognized as a death in the line of duty.

About a month after the new law went into effect, Danny Cortez received another letter in the mail.

This time SORM accepted his application.

“The carrier cancels the previous refusal to meet your requirements,” the letter said. “You have been exposed to work-related COVID….”

By then, Danny had already been discharged from the hospital. He spent 107 days there.

In addition to lung disease, Danny suffers from neuropathy.

“I can’t keep my balance because I can’t feel my legs,” he said. “My left hand is the same.”

But, the fight is not over.

He and his wife said there is still an ongoing struggle to get the state to actually pay Danny’s ongoing medical bills.

“They said they were going to provide him with lifelong medical care,” said Alicia Cortez. “I do not see it. And it’s frustrating because he needs a lot of treatment.”

According to the couple, doctors told Danny that he would eventually need a lung transplant.

“Doctors don’t tell me how much time I have,” Danny said.

SORM officials agreed to discuss Danny’s case with the WFAA on the condition that Danny’s attorney initiate a conference call. However, when their lawyer attempted to initiate a call, SORM staff did not respond to repeated requests to arrange a call.

Health care providers are prohibited by law from billing an injured worker or their private insurance for treatment of a work injury. However, in Danny’s case, health care providers continued to do so, exacerbating the problem.

Until recently, Danny paid for the oxygen, even though he wasn’t supposed to be charged by law.

“Danny’s injury is so severe that everyone knows he needs oxygen, so you can’t just turn your back and say, ‘OK, the health insurance company is billing, we’re not going to look at that,'” Sprain said. , which represents Danny. “Everyone knew you had to pay for oxygen.”

SORM also continues to dispute that some of the various illnesses are the result of occupational diseases, and this also costs Denny money because he has to pay for the sprain from his worker’s compensation benefits.

“This is a nightmare for every working patient in Texas,” Sprain said. “Danny has a lifelong illness. Danny’s fight will continue for the rest of his life.”

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