Cory D. Nelson's Disconnect: Former South Dakota Corrections Employee Finagles His Way Into Mental Health Care Despite Having No Proven Calling For The Job.


      In 2010, Arizona State Hospital superintendent Cory Nelson came to Arizona from South Dakota as one of several candidates for the position, this after the previous superintendent, John Cooper, left ASH in order to take another like job at a private health care facility in California. As most Americans know, South Dakota is among the poorest states in the nation today. The per capita income is dirt poor, and even  a fundamental awareness of American history allows for the understanding that really poor states often offer safe haven for corruption and low quality state services. South Dakota is also the location of appallingly third world conditions on several well known American Indian reservations in that state, such as Pine Ridge and Rosebud (Lakota Sioux), conditions that are commonly known to at least some people in all corners of the world. More personally, my own background relating to American Indian issues taught me a long, long time ago about deep running corruption and directly related racism in South Dakota's relatively recent state agencies (with former governor Bill Janklow standing at the head of that particularly disturbing class), and with the economics of the state in mind, I can only imagine how marginalized South Dakotas mentally ill population must be. Ergo, it is only apropos that Cory Nelson earned his stripes, as it were, in  place like South Dakota before becoming an employee of Arizona's mismanaged behavioral health care system.
      

As the following 2010 article in a prominent South Dakota newspaper reveals, Cory Nelson is not only lacking the fundamental heartfelt qualities of a person sincerely dedicated to the well being of mentally ill (or otherwise hospitalized, at risk) patient-clients, he is also willing to participate in covertly sanctioned administrative activities that go against the expressed wishes of the citizens whom he is supposed to serve as a state employee, as follows:

HSC Pay Raise Sparks Questions

Administrator Receives $10,000 Pay Increase

By Nathan Johnson
nathan.johnson@yankton.net

Published: Wednesday, July 7, 2010 1:17 PM CDT

     In a year when the South Dakota opted not to give state employees a salary bump, the decision to give a local official a pay increase has some people raising their eyebrows.                                                                                         

     In an effort to retain South Dakota Human Services Center (HSC) Administrator Cory Nelson, a state Department of Human Services (DHS) official said Nelson was given a $10,000 boost in April.

     Nelson was appointed as interim director of the HSC in November 2001. He was the former supervisor of the State Training School in Plankinton and had spent nine years in the South Dakota corrections system. However, at the time of his hiring at the HSC, Nelson was not qualified to be the administrator of the facility because state law required that the individual have five years of experience in a mental health institution. After arguments that the state law needed to be changed to allow a wider pool of applicants, the Legislature changed it in 2002. The new law said the administrator needed a college degree in administration and have administrative experience in a mental-health setting.

     Democratic Rep. Bernie Hunhoff of Yankton said he didn’t want to comment on any specific state official’s salary, but he believes everyone should be treated equally during what has been a difficult two years of balancing the state budget.

    “The sense of many lawmakers last session was quite the opposite of what is happening,” he said. “Some of us thought that if any salary dollars were available, they should be directed at those workers on the lower end of the wage spectrum — those that are struggling to pay the mortgage and put food on the table.”
    He added, “This seems like another example of the bureaucracy being out of step with the Legislature and the taxpayers.”

    Nelson declined to comment on the situation.

                                                    (from the Yankton Press & Dakotan, July 07, 2010)

ARTICLE END

          As a tax paying citizen of Arizona, it greatly troubles me to know that an identified need of the poorest state in the nation (South Dakota)  to "allow a wider pool of applicants" in its own administrative agencies has effectively opened the gateway for someone like Cory Nelson to become the head administrator of a public health care facility such as The Arizona State Hospital. Beyond being brand new to our state, the man has no formal background in health care (therein, an explanation of sorts for the presence of his infantile personal web site "crazycorycorner.weebly.com"), and more importantly (perhaps), Arizona is NOT the poorest state in the nation.  

       There is no justifiable reason for the citizens of Arizona to compromise our administrative policies in terms of establishing and maintaining as high quality a standard of medical care as we possibly can. Likewise, Arizonans have made clear that the state's public health care resources always need to be available to our most vulnerable citizens, including our children, the elderly, the infirm, and the mentally ill. In fact, given Arizona's most disturbing statistics at this time (as applicable to both ASH as well as the agency "Child Protective Services"), there is simply no room in the current Arizona Behavioral Health Services department for anyone not dedicated via heart and principle to the needs of that department's citizen based clientele.  

       This is particularly true at The Arizona State Hospital, where at this time there is a critically substandard state of medical-mental health care that largely exists due to the long employed primary care physicians and their lower ranking associates there at ASH. As I have tried to make clear since day one in my ongoing investigation and reporting of patient abuse at ASH, the issue of substandard care there is clearly out of control and seemingly unrecognized by the state agencies responsible for oversight of the Hospital's entire operation. The problems are so deeply embedded in the standard day to day practices there that only somebody with a very clear understanding of the Hospitals shortcomings should be running things at ASH. This is centrally important to the health and well being of ASH' entire patient community at ASH at this time, and I refuse to relent in my dedication to these issues, because I know beyond any shadow of doubt that only serious reform will bring about the sort of changes that need to happen there at ASH.

       At times it may seem that I am going out of way to direct any form of criticism about the conditions at The Arizona State Hospital that I can come up with, but nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is, I am simply not productive enough to stay 100% abreast of even my own stored memories and documented records, and at times I get a little lazy about structuring my accounting in the context of the data itself. But even if I shoot from the hip in terms of discussing my feelings about ASH, I can't avoid stumbling upon yet another body of well founded evidence about the mismanagement at that facility.  
      Indeed, things are becoming clearer every day, and all it takes is having access to public records through resources such as The Freedom of Information Act, and even the basic Internet itself. Administrator's at the Arizona State Hospital have thus far succeeded in unlawfully denying me access to my own personal medical records and other like information specific to my experiences at ASH, but in the meantime, simple research is bringing in new details in relation to the highly questionable backgrounds of the highest ranking staff at ASH, which in and of itself directly verifies my worst suspicions. 

Meanwhile, back to ASH supervisor Cory Nelson's work history.

       I learned the worst about Cory Nelson firsthand, in late summer, 2011, when he willfully participated in direct retaliation against me as a patient at ASH simply because I was willing to cry "foul" in the face of rampant clinical and administrative abuse of authority. Because of Cory Nelson's blatant disregard for my rights as a citizen and my needs as a patient, I was unlawfully transferred from the most peaceful unit at ASH to the most violent one (see April 09 2012: "Fact #3"), this despite me having no history of violence whatsoever (anywhere, at any time), and when I personally asked him about it, he stated:
      "I was informed of the need to make space on your unit of origin, and when we took a look at which patient was fit for such a transfer, you were the guy."       After this happened, but only after I had formally restated my inquiry and related concerns in writing,

Cory Nelson advised me in a letter as follows: 

      "It is certainly within the purview of the Superintendent/Chief Executive Officer... to make decisions that are in the best interest of that facility." 
       In this letter, Cory Nelson did not refer to the needs of the one patient most singularly impacted by this decision (me), nor did he offer any explanation whatsoever in terms of the anticipated therapeutic benefits to me, or why in fact I was deemed the only patient that he felt could be transferred at that time. As such, his vague comments concerning my rights as a patient-client at ASH violated key provisions of the Arizona Administrative Code at the time, and in failing to adhere to these standards, his actions were also in violation of federal and state laws specific to my protections and liberties as a citizen.  

        Thus, I came to the conclusion that something was fishy about this guy pretty quickly. He had only been at ASH for a little over 6 weeks when the above communication occurred, and I was initially willing to take into account; but before long, I began experiencing repeated acts of violence against me on the unit that I had been transferred to, violence that was at times orchestrated by staff on the unit; and no matter how strongly I stated my dissent about these matters, my expressions were effectively ignored time and time again. It was nerve wracking and at times terrifying to experience, and it is also something that any number of patients have to face day in and day out at ASH. Systematic retaliation for nothing more than exercising one's lawful right to cry "foul" when wrongdoing occurs, literally as though ASH' staff and the overall operation exist independently of the bylaws and standards of our nation; and in this specific instance, Cory Nelson's conduct was central to the administrative abuses that I am most concerned about in terms of the state's abject shortcomings in relation to behavioral health care. 

       That said, it is quite clear to me today, via my own actual experiences at ASH, that Cory Nelson's primary objective as a professional is to find relatively high paying state system positions (be it in South Dakota or Arizona, etc.), where he can exploit gross inefficiency and directly related systemic ineptitude without direct fear of being held accountable. I am also willing to say that low quality systems management in any given states administrative body is as commonly understood a fact of life in America as one might hope to find; and at ASH, in my humble though learned opinion, individuals like Cory Nelson, Donna Noriega, and Dr. Steven Dingle (to name a few), fairly well thrive because it is a setting where competence is measured not by direct service to the systems' clients, but rather by the ability to manipulate applicable statistics and cover up systematic shortfalls.

       

IN CLOSING: IN MY VERY WELL DOCUMENTED EXPERIENCES AS A PATIENT, NOBODY IN THE ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES OF THE ARIZONA STATE HOSPITAL CAN BE TRUSTED TO MEET THEIR BASIC OBLIGATIONS TO THE CITIZENS OF THE STATE OF ARIZONA BECAUSE THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN THE VERY REAL EXPERIENCES OF THE PATIENTS AND STAFF AT ASH IS SO DEEP THAT ADMINISTRATORS LIKE CORY NELSON HAVE LITTLE TO NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE DOING WHEN THEY  ARBITRARILY IMPOSE TECHNICALLY OVERBEARING ACTIONS UPON SAID PATIENTS.  BASED ON MY EXPERIENCE, IT IS ALSO MY OPINION THAT THEY ARE EFFECTIVELY INCAPABLE OF SUCH BECAUSE THEY ARE SIMPLY TOO SHORTSIGHTED (ETHICALLY AND PROFESSIONALLY)  TO HANDLE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF CARING FOR VULNERABLE ADULTS. CORY NELSON'S ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE FLOWS FROM HIS INITIAL PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT IN A STATE PRISON SYSTEM. BUT THE PATIENTS AT ASH ARE NOT PRISONERS, THEY ARE PATIENTS IN A HOSPITAL. THEREIN, A SICKENINGLY GAPING EXAMPLE OF THE GRAPHIC DISCONNECT BETWEEN THE NEEDS OF MENTALLY ILL PERSONS AND ASH' HIGHEST RANKING ADMINISTRATOR. THIS IS WRONG, IT IS INHUMANE, THE CONDITIONS AT THE ARIZONA STATE HOSPITAL ARE CRIMINALLY SUBSTANDARD, AND PEOPLE LIKE CORY NELSON ARE GETTING AWAY WITH IT. BOTTOM LINE.  

       

        Please see my April 30, 2012 "Resource Ideas" article, and get involved as soon as you can in defending the rights of patients in the Arizona State Hospital. The patients at ASH are mentally ill. They are not criminals, and they deserve nothing short of reasonable medical/mental health care. The administrative and clinical abuse at ASH is ongoing, and it needs to stop. Now. 


paoloreed@gmail.com