An Attorney With Teeth: Of Federal Courts And Public Interest Law

      Later today I will meet with one of several public interest attorneys who have thus far expressed interest in the potential of taking the concerns I have about corruption at the Arizona State Hospital to the federal courts. The chief mission at this point is getting one of these legal eagles to wrap their minds around the full breadth of the problem(s), this in order to generate the momentum I need so as to get these issues out into the public arena.
      I recently completed a task board that I am sharing with advocates and activists who work in the legal field here in Arizona and beyond, which they can utilize as they independently go about conducting their research, while also   contributing at will to my site, or to one of the other mental health advocacy organizations that I am hooked up with. My efforts in relation to exposing and addressing patient abuse here in Arizona is becoming more of a team effort every day, for there are folks all around the United States who have dedicated themselves to this work for many years. Arizona seems to be stagnating, in effect, which somewhat explains how and why it is that sub-standard mental health care exists so openly at ASH, but I am confident that before long, a meaningful base of statistics will be available for consideration, data that can be submitted to any number of authorities, including judicial bodies, and federal agencies such as The US Department of Justice.
      Here is a quick example some of the research that is being considered:
      
        1) A hospital wide record of serious/critical incidents reported by ASH patients in relation to the number of confirmations (vs. denials) of those reports by hospital representatives and the Department of Health Services Office of Grievances and Appeals over.
        2) A record of the number of security responses to the various units at ASH,
the nature of those responses, and the outcomes/remedies; and again, the role of patients in both the reporting phase as well as the remedial phase is central to the inquiry.
       3) Performance records specific to ASH physicians, nurses, social workers, and behavioral health technicians, and the level of connectedness between those records and the public arena.
       4) Data relating to the number of times that ASH and Department of Behavioral Health Services have the subject of civil actions, and the basis of those actions.
        5) Recent precedent at the national level and related disciplinary actions in the context of physician and administrative accountability.

More on this later, after I scramble some ideas with the attorney.

paoloreed@gmail.com