Of Dr. Steven Dingle. Who was in fact the Chief Medical Officer at The Arizona State Hospital during the entirety of the period 2010-2013, during which time some of the most horrifically unlawful misconduct of the administration of ASH (including Dingle's given authority as the acting CMO) has now been proven to have occurred.

 

This aspect of ASH's history- when as stated, Dr. Steven Dingle was granted, via the public trust, the responsibility of ensuring that patient care at ASH was 100% administered as per established law, policy, and recognized medical standards- includes what may be the most horrendously graphic event in Phoenix's recent history. More specifically, the cover up in May, 2011, of the violent escape of ASH patient Jesus Rincon Murietta, which in turn directly contributed to the brutal murder of April Mott in late August, 2011. I contend that no one administrative representative official at ASH had more awareness and associated responsibility then Dingle at that point in time wherein Hospital officials opted to cover up/deny Murietta's escape. I somewhat presume that as a medical staff representative, versus an actual member of ASH's executive level administrators, Dingle has declared himself uninvolved in the debacle as it played out in the hours immediately following Murietta's violent escape. Or, conversely, claim that his somewhat lack of relation to the Hospital in these last few months, when the underlying truth about the grossly substandard medical practices and associated administrative corruption finally came to light in the public's eye, amounts to innocence in the context of the criminal nature of this specific tragedy. But nothing could be farther from the truth, for as the acting CMO at that time (2010-2013), all/any formal elements to the discharge of, or other like status of each and every ASH patient fell directly under his oversight. It's just that simple. As follows:

Chief Medical Officer Job Profile and Description

 

The Chief Medical Officer is the senior most physician in a health care association be it a hospital or a nursing home. He has the task of leading and guiding the entire medical department and offering special services like the emergency services. Along with the medical duties, the chief medical officer offers a number of executive duties. It is the chief medical officer who looks after the daily management of the health care association.

 

Duties and Responsibilities

• Creating a liaison between the medical staff and the administration is one of their most important tasks.
• Coordinating the patient care and safety with great efficiency in order to make the entire process work in a coordinated fashion.
• Overseeing the quality of the medical department and ensuring that the health care programs are being implemented properly.
• Ensuring efficient and effective health care facilities to the patients through constant review and supervision of the medical practitioners.
• Carrying out good level of communication of different departments in order to make the entire system work in a coordinated fashion.
• Encouraging growth and development of the staff for the betterment of the organization and the welfare of the patients.

(Information provided by St. Vincent Healthcare)

This is not to say that individuals such as former ASH CEO's Ann Froio and Cory Nelson, former COO Donna Noriega, and ASH's long time legal counsel, Joel Rudd, bear less responsibility in this context. For indeed, it was a team effort (as Will "Yea team!" Humble would have put it) in all senses to allow for a known to be highly violent patient escapee to run amok in the greater Phoenix community, leading as it did to Ms. Mott's tragic death. These facts are well represented by now, in stories published by local and national press (and not to mention my blog, which is where the full details of this process as they stand were first reported), and now underlie the ongoing investigation of the hows and whys of ASH's longstanding substandard conditions. Bottom line.

Nor is it to say that the above described criminal conduct of ASH's primary administrators in this one particular matter even slightly represents the full breadth of corruption and associated patient abuse that has been occurring at ASH for no less then 10-15 years (or more). I only refer to the covered up escape of Jesus Rincon Murietta because that particular nature of misconduct illustrates what I realized when I was hospitalized at ASH:

"If these people are willing to put the greater public at direct risk of harm, merely to preserve their grossly sociopathic character and avoid their due accountability specific to Murietta's escape, there is no telling what they might be willing to do to we, the patients."

The above statement is a literal, albeit not verbatim, comment that I made in my own journal notes at that point in time when it became clear to me that Hospital administrators had lied to Arizona Republic reporter J.J. Hensley about the escape itself, this after I had contacted the Republic's news desk in order to do the right thing: Report as per my own sense of civic duty the simple fact that Murietta was at large, posing grave risk to himself, and the greater Phoenix community. And consistent with my expressed worry about the risks posed to patients, I attest to the fact that Dingle acted in undeniable complicity with Cory Nelson when I was unlawfully retaliated against for openly advocating for the rights of myself and my patient-peers; more specifically, Dingle co-signed the document that ordered my relocation from the most peaceful treatment at ASH to one of the most violent. A unit transfer forced upon me in blatant defiance of Hospital protocol, and as I have already clarified, in gross violation of state and federal law when it comes to retaliation across the board. (And yes, I of course have my copy of that document.) But as the well intentioned staff at ASH well know, retaliation at ASH was standard procedure, no matter who it might be making waves. All in order to preserve the ongoing malfeasance of certain staff (the majority of staff, in my experience) at all levels of employ.

It has come to my attention- and this upsets me to the core of my soul- that  Dr. Steven Dingle has been reinstated as the Chief Medical Officer at ASH. If this be the case, and I will confirm when I can but in the meantime will report what I have learned via a secondhand source purely due to the critical significance of the very possibility, I call upon the authorities now overseeing Arizona's public behavioral care system to exercise their due diligence in terms of maintaining a consistent process of improving ASH's general operation, this as per the public trust, and most certainly on behalf of the ASH patient community. For how can anyone safely presume that Dingle's utter lack of ethos and obviously questionable character has in anyway changed. Read my lips, people: The man is a criminal.

In closing, I definitely want to thank Sharon Ashcroft and the ASH Human Rights Committee for their incredibly deep dedication to standing up against the monstrosity known as ASH's most recent administrative  body. I fully believe that if not for the diligence of Sharon and her associate committee members, and their willingness/strength of character in terms of resisting the overt attempts of those Rat Bastards to suppress the efforts of the committee itself, the substandard medical practices at ASH would still be in effect. And I mean that.

paoloreed.gmail.com