Hi everyone! - this is going to be a long post, so I'll put the TLDR at the top;

My MIL got in a car crash and had back surgery that was said to have gone great at Hospital 1 - followed by a staph infection and dismissal of symptoms at Hospital 1. She went to a different surgeon at Hospital 2 and now, after finding no hardware, no fusion, and no indication of the problems noted by Doctor 1, Hospital 1 refuses to share the patient records necessary for treatment. My wife has power of attorney, What are my next steps in regards to litigation (mclennan county, TX)?

My MIL got in a car wreck in 2020, she was T-boned by an SUV that did not stop for a stop sign and broke her back in several places.
She got referred to a hospital after settlements were made and had surgery in November 2022, in which they would, (1) Fuse her spine back together, and (2) install 4 pieces of hardware to hold it all together.
the surgery goes "well" -besides them 'forgetting' about her opioid allergy- and after 2 days she gets sent home with a fever (>102F). The fever holds for a week and she goes back to the hospital; she is given pain meds and is told "we will see you in a week" - she gets a cold in the next week, because of a sudden weather drop, but the pain meds suppress the fever, which indicates infection.
She goes into the ER January 29th, and has emergency surgery January 30th, after which she is told "one of the screws came loose and infected the bone, so now she has a STAPH infection on her spine.

The day after we rushed over to the hospital from 12 hours away because she called us telling us she was told to pack it up because they were removing her from the hospital in 4 days, she is still in bad shape and everyone is pushing expensive medication on her. On top of that she cannot get a hold of her neurosurgeon to find out what is going on at all. We get to the hospital and start conversations, but the neurosurgeon "can't make it" after we arrive so we get stuck with the case manager, who completely dismisses any remarks from other doctors and tells us these are the following options:

1) the VA might do an outpatient, but they cannot provide the medicine - We tried this option, but the VA did not approve because they did not get a reference from the neurosurgeon (!!!)
2) she will need to purchase the tools to take care of herself at home. We bought a case (600$ worth for a month) to make sure she could do just that because she could not afford it after the surgery.

Except, nothing got better but the staph infection, so, after 3 months of no improvement she went back to ask if there was anything else they could do. They dismissed the symptoms and told her it was because she had gained 40 lbs since leaving the hospital (where she lost 60 lbs during her stay). After that last argument with Hospital 1, we decided to look into getting a new neurosurgeon at a different hospital, to figure out what is needed for recovery.

This October 2024 she finally went to the new neurosurgeon, who could not access her files as the first hospital refused to share her medical records with the second hospital. So he decides to do a full scan of everything to have a base picture for them to start with and what does he find? No hardware, no fusion, and only one piece of hardware that was ever placed; Basically, any big tug of force and her spine would've snapped in half, causing her to be paralyzed from the waist down (according to Surgeon 2). This also meant that she has been receiving treatment for the wrong thing for 2 years, which is why there is no improvement.

Where do I go from here? I am looking to pursue legal action because my MIL is now permanently disabled and the neurosurgeon trying to cover it up needs to be stopped before it happens to anyone else; most importantly, a subpoena for those patient records so we can find out what happened.

Thank you for your time, have a fantastic day <3