Staff Shortages: Wherein the ongoing crisis at The Arizona State Hospital specific to shortages in behavioral health technician staff has grossly unjust impacts on the ASH patient community. As always.

Hi PJ

Here is the latest from -----… Due to the lack of staffing patients are being confined to day rooms for crowd control….  They are also shutting down mall privileges because of lack of staff.  They are telling the patients that it is only going to get worse. (April 09, 2013) 

NUTSHELL: Generally speaking, the patients at The Arizona State Hospital are afforded a range of privileges designed to optimize their overall state of mental and physical health and well-being.  These privileges include access to various recreational and therapeutic actives and related in-hospital resources, the bulk of which are provided at different locations throughout the hospital. Such resources include a gymnasium, library, exercise room, art therapy room(s), and so on; while on the Civil side of the hospital (where approximately half of the ASH patients reside), there is an open area referred to as "The Patient Mall", which is comprised of a roughly 1/4 mile long piece of concrete lined on each side by seating areas and other like amenities intended to provide patients with a reasonably comfortably environment not confined within the walls of specific treatment units. These various privileges and related amenities are central to extensive funding that the citizens of Arizona have provided on behalf of ASH's patients over the past 15-20 years, and as illustrated in the 2004 newspaper article that I posted two days ago (see "Teaser", Mon. 04/08/13), even the federal government has emphasized the importance of granting ASH patients clear opportunity(s) to participate in therapeutic and recreational opportunities away from the limited confines of unit "day rooms", where they have nothing more to do than watch t.v. or sleep in filthy overstuffed chairs that are thoroughly wiped down about once every decade while the more rambunctious individuals (staff included) carry on with nerve wracking episodic outbursts and other like mania.     

With respect for the revelations exposed in 1999-2000 by a Medicaid investigation at ASH, these are only a few of the specific details provided at that time:

Inspectors with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reviewed 12 patient cases during a May visit to the State Hospital, at 24th and Van Buren streets. They found a hospital where patients were plunked in front of televisions or allowed to wander instead of being engaged in treatment.

The review found:

Patients have cookie-cutter, incomplete or ineffective treatment plans. One patient who had been at the hospital four months told them he couldn’t remember any treatment other than “going to the library once,” “movies and popcorn” and “medicine.”

Update to the present: So long as the highest paid state employees in the Arizona Department of Health Services fail to do the right thing by directly addressing the graphic wrongdoing at ASH, things there are never going to change. As illustrated in recent news reports (see my blog article: "RE: Security Cutbacks At The Arizona State Hospital" March 12, 2013), recent major changes to the basic management of The Arizona State Hospital have led to shockingly unreasonable staff shortages and related safety concerns, including but not limited to a number of patient escapes. These changes were implemented by ASH's current supervisor, Cory "crazycorycorner" Nelson, in order to establish what he and his superiors in the Arizona Department of Health Services (namely ADHS director Will Humble) have characterized as a "CULTURE OF CARE," and central to those changes, Nelson has laid off dozens of experienced ASH staff, including a thigh number of security staff. He has done while simultaneously ignoring increasing staff concerns that arose due to shocking incidents of violence that lest more than one staff person gravely injured, and in clear contradiction to promises that he made to staff during in the hiring process in summer, 2011. Now, over the past 12 weeks, there have been several highly publicized news reports that came about in response to reports generated by ASH staff specific to safety, and subsequent investigations of those reports exposed the issue of patient escapes; this, in turn, led to three specific interviews with Cory Nelson in which he patently denied the fact that these changes have had anything but positive results. In one case, for example, he flatly rejected the notion that reduced security staff contributed to a series of patient escapes (no less than 5 in 2012) on the 10 p.m. nightly news, which in the eyes of at least some viewers, greatly brought Nelson's character and capabilities as the man most responsible for managing ASH into question.  

Consistent with these other reports, I am now receiving information about the direct impacts that these staff shortages are having on the patients at ASH. Specifically, one such recent report reads like this:

Hi PJ

Here is the latest from -----… Due to the lack of staffing patients are being confined to day rooms for crowd control….  They are also shutting down mall privileges because of lack of staff.  They are telling the patients that it is only going to get worse. 

As usual, in this specific case, we are again seeing how the ineptitude of ASH's administrators is landing squarely on the heads of the Hospital's seriously mentally ill and disabled client-patients. Cory Nelson and Will Humble have absolute direct responsibility with respect for these matters at this time, along with various other executive staff at both ASH and in ADHS/Behavioral Health Services. But it is also critical to note that the primary care providers at ASH are also involved in these issues, for they are the ones most directly responsible for each and every ASH patients' welfare, and this direct responsibility flows straight to ASH's chief medical officer, Dr. Laxman P. Patel. All of these individuals are currently complicit in allowing for the patients at ASH to be denied the general resources available at ASH, and this is wrong. Not unusual, mind you, just wrong, wrong, wrong, and 100% consistent with the standard practices at ASH, as illustrated to date by this blog, and as increasingly reflected by prime time news reporting.  

I am not going to send to much time on this today. But you can be sure that there are other developments from my end in the works, even as I write. The administrators and senior clinicians at The Arizona State Hospital are willfully engaging in substandard medical-mental health care and practice, and they are getting away with! For now. For there are a number of people today looking directly at these matters, and I am increasingly confident that it is only a matter of time before these rat bastards are held accountable to the full extent of applicable state and federal law.   

PLEASE SEE: RESOURCES IDEAS: MARCH 13, 2013 I recently posted a new listing of resources and contact information specific to the affairs of The Arizona State Hospital, and I strongly encourage anybody of like mind to do whatever you feel comfortable with in terms of defending the dignity and rights of the patient community at ASH. The administrators and clinicians at ASH are maintaining that operation at a dismally substandard level of medical care and practice, and they are getting away with lock-stock-and barrel. Patient abuse is highly illegal and when it comes the care needs of the highly vulnerable, seriously mentally disabled patients at ASH, it is sickening to the core. Let's work together and see that this matter is resolved today. I welcome any and all contacts- INCLUDING ASH STAFF, AND I ASSURE YOU THAT YOUR IDENTITY WILL NOT BE PUT AT RISK- and want to extend my sincere thanks to those of you who I have come to know thus far through my writings, and I really appreciate your willingness to consider my concerns in this context.     

paoloreed@gmail.com