RERUN May 2014. This article was originally published two years ago. This is the second time it has been republished.

Yesterday, I shared another RERUN from May, 2012, that illustrated the failure of state level officials in the Arizona Office of Grievances and Appeals (OGA) to abide by the letter of state law in the context of providing clients of ADHS/BHS services designed to address allegations of staff misconduct. There are clear rules of procedure in association with these services, including but not limited to timeline requirements, wherein formal grievance submittals alleging staff misconduct at The Arizona State Hospital (and beyond) in a reasonably timely manner, highlighted in the AZ Administrative Code (state law). The following data is offered in order to clarify precisely how I- as an ASH patient- came to realize the fact patient abuse and clinical ineptitude in Arizona's sole long term mental health facility are virtually condoned as a direct consequence of OGA's failure to abide by the requirements of this body of law, to the direct detriment of the ASH patient community as a whole.   

TIMELINE MAY 2012.


Identifying Key Factors #One: Wherein research concerning critical problems in the system lends itself to understanding the need for serious and deep reform in Arizona's behavioral health care system and its affiliated agencies.

The following article was originally published in this blog in May, 2012, approximately four months after my discharge from The Arizona State Hospital. The content is designed to illustrate the fact that administrative staff at ASH, as well as well up into the supervisory offices of ADHS/BHS, are willfully engaged in failing to abide by very specific laws that apply to any Arizona citizens right to due process, as per state and federal law and policy. More specifically, I can attest to the fact that the ADHS/BHS Office of Grievances and Appeals willfully ignored clearly stated time-line requirements that apply to civil procedure, as dictated in the Arizona Administrative Code, and other like edicts of law and policy. I contend that each and every state employee identified in the following material were complicit in allowing for this area of unlawful misconduct to occur, and further, that this data as it applied to my experiences in the context are far from unique. For I know for a fact that there are a number of ASH patients who at this time (2014) are being subject to the same issues illustrated herein. Substandard practices across the board, and they are all getting away with it.    

I am in the process of trying to get the Arizona Department of Health Services Office of Grievances and Appeals (ADHS OGA) to comply with various Arizona statutes, as well as applicable provisions of the Arizona Administrative Code, specific to the long overdue scheduling of three (3) of my current grievance reports for hearing in the AZ Office of Administrative Hearings in Phoenix. As noted already, I just presented one body of allegations about clinical and administrative abuse at The Arizona State Hospital in my first hearing in this context last Thursday, May 17, 2012; but these other three (3) matters are of equal importance to the current substandard conditions at ASH, and the willingness of ADHS OGA to stall the legal process in this manner is 100% consistent with my concerns about deeply ingrained misconduct in the entire structure of the Arizona behavioral health care system, including but not limited to the substandard medical-mental care practices at ASH.

BELOW IS MY MAY 25, 2012 MOTION (AND THE RELATED ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF RECEIPT) TO THE DIRECTOR OF THE ARIZONA OFFICE OF ADMINISTRATIVE HEARINGS, WHEREIN I REQUEST A PROMPT SCHEDULING OF ALL THREE OF THESE OVERDUE GRIEVANCE REPORTS FOR JUDICIAL REVIEW IN THAT OFFICE. I ALSO FORWARDED A COPY OF THIS DOCUMENT TO THE MANAGER OF THE LEGAL OFFICE IN THE ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES IN THE HOPE THAT THEY RESPOND IN KIND AND GET THESE MATTERS SCHEDULED AS THEY ARE REQUIRED TO DO. I CANNOT BE SURE THAT THIS MOTION WILL DO THE TRICK, BUT AS ALWAYS, I AM WILLING TO ENGAGE IN GOOD FAITH COMMUNICATION WITH THESE VARIOUS AUTHORITIES AS MATTER OF TRYING TO GET THEM ALL TO FOLLOW THEIR OWN RULES AND MEET THIEU RELATED OBLIGATIONS TO ME AS AN INDIVIDUAL AS WELL AS EVERY OTHER MEMBER OF ARIZONA'S BEHAVIORAL HEALTH CARE CLIENTELE COLLECTIVELY SPEAKING.

OAH Electronic Motion Submission System oahmotion@azoah.com
to me

This is a message from the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings to inform you that a motion has been submitted for Pending scheduling. The details are as follows:

Docket number: Pending scheduling
Hearing date: Pending
Filed by: (PJ Reed paoloreed@gmail.com)
Filed on: 5/25/2012
Sent to: Director
Copies e-mailed to: Thomas Salow, ADHS Managing Counsel salowt@azadhs.gov
Filing party will also notify:
(none specified)

--------------------------

Hi. I am writing you to inquire about the scheduling of three (3) OAH hearings, each one relating to unlawful staff conduct as The Arizona State Hospital and related ADHS/OGA grievance reports that occurred up to one full year ago. I received formal word from ADHS many months ago confirming that each of these three matters would be scheduled for hearing/OAH judicial review, but have not to date heard anything more. The absence of timeliness in the context of each of these separate is in violation of AAC provisions, and flies on the face of federal standards relating to due process and equal protection, and I am requesting your assistance in seeing that three (3) hearings be promptly scheduled, to whatever extent your office can help me, of course. These are the docket numbers for the oldest two (2) of the pending cases:
1) ADHS/OGA #H090611S0009 (regarding a sequence of incidents that occurred beginning on May 25, 2011)
2) ADHS/OGA #H120511S0012 (regarding a sequence of events that occurred beginning Sept. 06, 2011)

I do not have the docket number for the third of these grievance reports, but the related sequence of incidents began on September 30, 2011, when a patient named Melissa A. attacked and injured me with a metal chair while AzSH staff looked on.

Any information that you can provide me with concerning the status of these yet to be scheduled OAH hearings will be greatly appreciated.

--------------------------

The following file was submitted with the motion: NONE.

If a file was submitted with the motion, it should be attached to this e-mail. In the event that a file seems to be missing, please contact the Office of Administrative Hearings.

Thank you for using the OAH Electronic Motion Submission System.       END

       IN CLOSING: As per this most recent court proceeding (May 17, 2012), I will be presenting my allegations in each of these yet to be scheduled hearings (presuming they are ever scheduled, in fact) in contest with the Arizona Attorney Generals Office (most likely the same hollow cheeked man, Joel Rudd, who represented The Arizona State Hospital last Thursday). As such, the grossly disproportionate power dynamo ic is already in effect, this in the sense that the state is delaying the scheduling of these hearings depute that being in violation of their own rules, and there is little that I alone can do about it at this time. My resources are very, very, limited, and I have next to no experience in these sorts of affairs.

PLEASE HELP ME WITH MY CAUSE: It is never too late for somebody else to get involved in this ongoing effort to defend the rights of Arizona's mentally ill adults, with particular respect for the patients at the Arizona State Hospital. Please see my Resource Ideas article from April 08, 2012, and do what you can to demand meaningful oversight and investigation of all of my feel founded and good faith allegations about patient abuse at ASH and behind in the state behavioral health care system. I strongly desire getting the United States Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights involved in this specific context (investigations), for example, and simple 2-3 paragraph letters to them about these matters can make a huge difference.  

UPDATE May 2014: It is critical to state that in the 13 full months I was hospitalized at ASH, I did formally file 25 grievance reports as per protocol about the substandard practices and associated staff misconduct as applicable to my own experiences during that time. Less than half of those submitted grievance reports were acknowledged, in spite of that fact I provided clear evidence in support of my allegations, 100% as per the associated form work, and so on. This fact in itself represents gross violations of both state and federal law in the context of due process and equal protection. The fact is, the only reason these issues arise at ASH has everything to do with the status of the ASH patients, all of whom are seriously mentally ill and disabled- and this is patent discrimination on the basis of disability, as it stands at ASH. 

Also: As I stated above, I am aware via direct contact with several Arizona State Hospital patients, patient' family members, Arizona based citizen advocates, and other like sources of hard data, that there is an insidious presence today of grossly unlawful violations specific to well established civil procedural law, as it applies at state and federal levels of  crucially enacted law and policy. One such person recently identified ASH's legal counsel Joel "the mortician" Rudd as a "prince of darkness", this as per their interactions with this particular Rat Bastard, and  as per such persons asking me to further the process to the best of my ability, I will say again: Rat Bastards Beware. You know who you are, and that that the walls are closing in. Why not do the right thing now, before it is too late in terms of career and reputation? I will immediately support any one you willing to help turn the tide once and for all, but do realize that I intend to take no prisoners, either, in terms of bringing full accountability upon each and every Rat Bastard responsible for furthering the underlying details of this issue- Arizona's dirtiest secret- The Arizona State Hospital, which has been operating in utter defiance of established health care law and policy as a matter of standard practice.

paoloreed@gmail.com