As a matter of exercising my sense of civic duty to my fellow citizens in the state of Arizona, I have gone to great length in trying and alert the public about the ongoing problems at The Arizona State Hospital (ASH) via open and good faith communication with Will Humble, who is the director of Arizona's Department of Health Services (ADHS), as well as by offering my assistance to the employees at ASH who have expressed their concerns about the out of control conditions at ASH through postings submitted to ASH supervisor Cory"crazycorycorner"Nelson's personal website. There is only so much I can do, however, so I am increasingly relying on other matters that arise in the state in direct relation to my concerns about the endemic failures of ADHS and ASH administrators to meaningfully address the problems at ASH. As such, there is an absolute crisis at this time in the state's Child Protective Services system (CPS), and more than a few similarities can be identified in terms of seeing where the same sorts of shortcomings in ADHS have been arising in CPS; and as direct consequence of these shortcomings, children are dying, on the one hand, while on the other hand, the patients at ASH are continually being subjected to very clear substandard mental-medical health care practices.
As part of my investigation into the out of control conditions at ASH, I have been sharing ASH staff postings to Nelson's website with my readers. The results, as far as we can determine, have been mixed (at Best), but that's something. Below I hope to remind you all of this particular staff concern, posted to Nelson's website about 3 weeks ago.
2 FRIGTNED 2 SAY 08/18/12
ASH CLAIMING ON THE NEWS (CHANNEL 3) THAT ASSAULTS HAVE GONE DOWN. LIARS!! WORSE THAN EVER! WHY DOESN'T JACO OR MEDICARE LOOK AT EMPLOYEE TURNOVER RATE?
Arizona CPS staffing turmoil is dire: Turnover rampant as foster cases rise. by Mary K. Reinhart - Sept. 6, 2012 11:11 PM The Republic | azcentral.com
- A record number of child-abuse and neglect cases coupled with high staff turnover are undermining promises to improve Arizona's child-welfare agency and provide better care for the state's most vulnerable kids. After more than a year of efforts to reform the state's Child Protective Services, and despite a governor's task force set up to help find solutions, the overwhelmed agency is falling further behind in attempts to recruit enough caseworkers and significantly reduce the backlog of thousands of cases. CPS is nearly 500 workers short of meeting state and national caseload standards, according to the most recently published state data, in large part due to an unceasing increase in reports of child abuse and neglect. The staff turnover rate at the agency has reached 31 percent, according to a biannual state report released last month, meaning nearly one in three front-line workers has quit his or her job this year. Because child-welfare work is difficult and draining, state agencies typically expect turnover rates that average 20 to 22 percent, said Nancy Dickinson, director of the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute at the University of Maryland's School of Social Work.
- Arizona's turnover is concerning, Dickinson said, and the consequences could be dire as families deal with a parade of new caseworkers.
- "It's kind of like a snowball effect," she said. "Once turnover rates start increasing, workers don't stay around because their caseloads go up."
- A California study showed that high turnover rates, considered 30 percent and above, led to higher rates of families coming back into the child-welfare system with new reports, as well as lengthier stays in foster care for children.
- "It really changes the way families are treated," Dickinson said of caseworker turnover.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/20120906arizona-cps-staffing-turmoil-dire.html#ixzz25nxZFzrS
The relevance of these issues in terms of recognizing how critical the problems at The Arizona State Hospital are, with the potential harm posed to the patient community at ASH in mind, simply cannot be denied. It was clear to me as my February 21, 2012, discharge from The Arizona State Hospital approached, that major changes were being implemented in overall structure of staff at ASH, changes that came about due to drastic cuts in Arizona's overall budget specific to public health care (amongst other things, like education, all thanks to Governor Jan Brewer), and which were leading at the time to everything from unanticipated overtime demands, as well as layoffs and other like developments, all of which led many staff to verbally express clear worry over their situation as arguable underpaid employees at Arizona's one and only long term public mental health care facility. It was also stated pretty clearly by several staff members who I interacted with that the hiring of Cory "crazycorycorner" Nelson was largely based upon his qualifications as a skilled budget manager who would be willing to whatever he had to squeeze the operation at ASH into the increasingly narrow parameters of the Arizona health care budget; in other words, Nelson was possibly hired based on his ability save money more that anything else, and given that he came to Arizona from one of the poorest states in the country (South Dakota), this makes sense. High turnover rates are only one specific statistic that I believe will come to stand as evidence of how terribly mismanaged the affairs at ASH are at this time, but until officials such as ADHS Director Will Humble desist in blatantly covering up the problems at ASH, many of these matters will continue unabated, with any amount of possible damage to the patients at ASH.
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When I arrived at The Arizona State Hospital on January 11, 2011, some of my property was immediately stolen by somebody working at ASH, most likely security staff, but I never did learn precisely what happened to it, beyond knowing that it disappeared at some point in the first 4-8 following my arrival and admission to ASH. This matter is of particular concern to me because the stolen property was medication, and the implications of the theft are that the ASH staff responsible for the theft stole it in order to sell it on the black market.
Once I was made aware that some of my medication had been stolen, I immediately requested that my primary attending ASH physician at that time, Dr. Laxman Patel, do whatever he needed to in order to see that an reasonable investigation of this matter come about. However, to my knowledge, no such reasonably meaningful investigation ever occurred, and all/any attempts I made to learn about the matter were brushed off or other disregarded by Patel, as well as by the ASH patient advocate, Sonya Serda, and my assigned ASH social worker at the time, Megan Mitscher. I got the same response from each of these people, as follows:
"It has been taken care of."
It was clear to me that these individuals felt I was not entitled to know about what had, in fact, happened to my property.
The manner in which my good faith desire to learn about what had happened to my stolen property was blatantly disregarded smacked of deceit and impropriety at the time. It was starkly clear to me that no aspect of the wrongdoing that I witnessed and was subjected to while hospitalized at ASH was of sincere concern to my doctor, or any other representative of ASH administrative staff. It is a culture of corruption that extends to the highest ranking members of the ASH staff structure, and on into the offices of ADHS. As such, I feel that it's all a recipe for disaster; a disaster, in fact, that plays out day in and day out within the walls and fences of ASH, but the willingness of the ASH administrators and clinicians (and ADHS' Will Humble, so far as I am concerned) to cloud or utterly cover up the out of control conditions at ASH amounts to nothing short of criminal abuse of authority and medical malpractice. However one looks at it, there is no denying the fact that it all occurs at the direct expense of the highly vulnerable patent community at ASH.
Here is another excerpt from a recent article in the AZ Republic concerning the failure of Arizona Child Protective Services to meet their fundamental obligations to their clients, directly contributing to the tragic deaths of Arizona's most at risk children. I include this specific expert because it illustrates the exact same sorts of disregard for wrongdoing that I ran into at ASH whenever I reported patient abuse and requested meaningful response form the one's directly assigned to advocate for patient safety and ell being at ASH. It is sickening.
CPS hands another young child over to die. by Laurie Roberts, columnist - Aug. 29, 2012 12:00 AM The Republic/ azcentral.com
- Who knows what she might have become had she been blessed with halfway-decent parents or halfway-competent help from Child Protective Services.
She would have been 10 months old by now. She would have been sitting up and crawling and laughing, as babies do...
- It's been four months since we learned of Baby Vanessa's fate and the state's role in dispatching her to the hereafter, so I figured it was time to find out how she went free-falling through the state's safety net.
- Or not. The matter, I am told, has been taken care of.
- "The majority of the individuals involved with this case are no longer with the department," Department of Economic Security spokeswoman Tasya Peterson wrote in a statement sent to me on Friday. "Agency officials conducted a thorough investigation in order to determine what happened and has taken appropriate measures to address the issues identified."
- What those "appropriate measures" are, we evidently aren't entitled to know. Just as it apparently isn't any of our business what specifically went wrong or how the agency plans to ensure that it doesn't happen again.
- We can know only that "the majority" of the workers are gone -- though not fired, asthat would be public record -- and that "appropriate measures" have been taken.
She would have been 10 months old by now. She would have been sitting up and crawling and laughing, as babies do...
It may seem to be bait of a stretch for me to directly compare the problems at AZ Child Protection Services with the out of control situation at The Arizona State Hospital and in the ADHS/Behavioral Health Services (BHS) system, but nothing could be farther from the truth. These respective systems share the same sort of functions and directly associated obligations and responsibilities in terms of how they operate. And both CPS and ADHS/BHS manage the care needs of Arizona's most at risk-vulnerable citizens. As with the neglected and abused children flowing out of Arizona's drug addled inner city environments, the patients at ASH exist so out of sight-out of mind from the awarenesses of the greater public, that the clinical and administrative abuse and neglect that I witnessed and experienced during my time at ASH goes entirely unnoticed, other than by arguably incompetent staff who are either too afraid for their jobs or simply too unethical/dense to stand up on the patient community's behalf.
Therein, the significance of data emanating from research compiled in relation to CPS at this time. It is only a matter of time before yet another headline grabbing incident occurs at ASH, just as it is with CPS. I attest to this as one who has seen and been subjected to the worst health care in America.
I am a member of the mentally ill population, and I know what that means, particularly in regards to the substandard practices at ASH.
IN CLOSING: Media professionals such Laurie Roberts of the Arizona Republic utilize basic public records requests in establishing the data provided in the above two articles about Arizona's Child Protective Services. Annual, semi-annual, and even monthly reports of various types are prepared and issued by public health care institutions like ASH as a matter of their licensure and function as public entities, and all of it is open to the public. Anything but readily available, for state agencies such as ADHS and facilities such as ASH do not like to be scrutinized. The unwillingness of my clinicians and the administrators at The Arizona State Hospital to provide me with my own personal medical records, including but not limited to nurse's notes and other like details that can serve to represent the flow of "care" provided to me during my 13 long months of mis-treatment at ASH, belies how deeply embedded the corruption there is. They know that I am intelligent enough to prove their wrongdoing via simple oversight/review of my own affairs in the context of that flow of "care", and there is no way in hell they are going to grant my fundamental right to access my own personal records if they can help it. This, just another example of how inept and shortsighted these people are. Because those records are mine, and I will come into possession of them in time.
Please visit my April 30, 2012 "Resource Ideas" article today, and decide how you can best act in defense of the patients at The Arizona State Hospital. I cannot emphasize enough how critically we need your help. The abuse of patient at ASH is ongoing, and it is inhumane, criminal, and patently unacceptable. Let's stop it now.
paoloreed@gmail.com
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I would really love input of any kind from anybody with any interest whatsoever in the issues that I am sharing in this blog. I mean it, anybody, for I will be the first one to admit that I may be inaccurately depicting certain aspects of the conditions
at ASH, and anonymous comments are fine. In any case, I am more than willing to value anybody's feelings about my writing, and I assure you that I will not intentionally exploit or otherwise abuse your right to express yourself as you deem fit. This topic is far, far too important for anything less. Thank you, whoever you are. Peace and Frogs.