As to Margery Ault, and Kara Burke  longtime senior staff in ADHS' Office of Grievances and Appeals. 

Pervaiz Akhter

ASH psychiatrist 1999-2014

Current CEO Transitions Center, PLLC

Tempe, AZ 

(2016 NOTE: the following content was originally published in May, 2012, and again in revised form in April, 2014. Acting, as such, to prove the undeniable fact that I, the author of PJ Reed The Arizona State Hospital, was patently ignored by these individuals when- as a tax paying consumer/patient at ASH- I offered good faith opportunity for them to do the right thing. Which, of course, they blatantly failed do. And as I have stated more then once, this content only fractionally represents to broader information and data to be included in my pending [now in development] manuscript, Arizona State Hospital and Patient Abuse THE BOOK.)

DATE LINE MAY, 2012: Clarification Of My Request For Rigorous Investigation Of Substandard Conditions Throughout The Whole Of The Arizona State Hospital And Its Parent Agency In The State, AZ Department of Health Services/Behavioral Health Services

As described in my very recent May 29, 2012, article (see "Arizona Administrative Code"), I formally submitted my request for investigation of critically substandard conditions at the Arizona State Hospital (ASH), and throughout its parent agency, the Arizona Department of Health Services/Behavioral Health Services, on February 09, 2011 (shown here- see full size in original article). I directed this submission to Division Chief Margery Ault, out nothing more or less then good faith, with the simple belief that any person receiving services via the ADHS/BHS construct can rely upon persons such as her to comply by very clear standards of rule and policy.

The issue of reported substandard conditions, and my related allegations concerning the danger, illegality, and inhumanity, was/were central to my expressed concerns (as exhibited in this very letter),  and is only one issue that I am also willing to suspect may fairly well worry the ones in power at the Hospital  and at ADHS, particularly if I am able to prevail in seeing that my claims to this effect are meaningfully investigated and addressed in full accordance with the law, because the implications of these matters as I have presented them suggests that any number of high ranking staff at ASH and in the Department may soon be held accountable for this very extensive wrongdoing at the administrative level.              

But I cannot take anything for granted. Given my very real experiences to date, I have no reason to believe that my ongoing advocacy on behalf of myself and my peers at The Arizona State Hospital is having much effect. Or that these individuals have the conscientiousness to possess any actual concern about the fact that ASH's general treatment of it's patient-consumers is currently abusive and/or harmful, in utter defiance of standardized medical practice, and so on.  For I long ago learned the hard way that none of the people running ASH, or in the offices of Behavioral Health Services, are willing to follow their own rules, much less to abide by the standards of common law and policy. It is their tendency to rely on malfeasant interpretations of statutes that, in my experience, none of them are even able to comprehensively understand; this is the best reason I can come up with, at least, in terms of trying to understand the ongoing and seemingly unending flow of graphic ineptitude that I am still encountering today. But it is unconscionable in every sense for people with this much responsibility over the care and well being of Arizona's mentally disabled clients to be so glaringly incapable of maintaining their duties. Maybe that's what frightens these devils, the increasingly distinct possibility that they will be found out, and recognized, therein, for who and what they are.

That said, feel free to look (below) at a copy of the first response that I got from the ADHS Office of Grievances and Appeals, after having submitted my initial, February 09, 2012 (while still hospitalized in ASH itself), request for an investigation of substandard conditions. The circular and seemingly nonsensical language of this letter is entirely consistent with the unlawful manipulation of clearly stated law and policy that these so called professionals always try to get away with in situations like this. But try as they might, they simply aren't bright enough to pull it off (not on my watch, anyway). And the fact is, a client-patient such as I can submit all of the well drafted reports of staff misconduct in the world, but each and every time, these people will come back with some variation of this letter. They very clearly do this in order to deny any possibility of these sorts of reports being formally acknowledged, and as with most business entities, it's a simple guess that liability issues are their primary concern. (Not that that is a sound justification, mind you.)

In any case, the March 27, 2012, letter shown below was sent to me by Kara Burke, of ADHS Office of Grievance and Appeals, close to eight (8) weeks after I had submitted my good faith request for an investigation of substandard conditions at ASH, but it is clear that she has no interest in entertaining the possibility of any such investigation, as per the language of the document itself:

   

As soon as I received the above letter, I recognized that I  needed to further clarify both my original intent, as well as my determination, in terms of hammering down my express request for a meaningful  investigation of  substandard conditions at ASH, and beyond. Ergo, as a matter of wanting to make that as clear as I could, I sent Kara Burke my own form of a rejection letter on April 11, 2012 (see below). As much as anything else, I did all I could in this letter to stress the fact that I was requesting a separate investigation, specific to conditions, and not directly connected to any of my other serious grievance reports, because ADHS' Office of Grievances and Appeals was clearly trying to distill the significance of this specific report by tying it into my other grievance reports. But my primary realization that the overall conditions at ASH were critically substandard largely came about through my learning the hard way that all aspects of the grievance and investigation process were far below commonly recognized standards, too, and I made it clear in my April 11, 2012, that as I see it today, ADHS as a whole is very clearly at fault. ASH is nothing more than an extension of ADHS itself, and while it took me awhile to grasp this fact, I have by now come to realize (again, the hard way) that the abuse I experienced at ASH is only one fairly minute aspect of ADHS' generally out of control state of affairs. Ergo, my pointed expressions to this effect, below:

Liability issues aside, I also suspect that at this point in time, the staff as ADHS are possibly afraid of losing their jobs, or better yet, of the possibility that some of them, including physicians and administrators, fear the very real possibility of criminal charges. Because in my humble opinion, many of the things I either witnessed or experienced first hand while hospitalized at ASH were undoubtedly criminal in nature, both in terms of the acts themselves, as well as with respect for the impacts on the client-patients. 

IN CLOSING (May 2012): I spoke with one of my media contacts in Arizona earlier this evening, and he is going to look into things down there at The Arizona State Hospital, and in the various offices of the Department of Health Services/Behavioral Services, from his end our communicative conduit. Likewise, I put the word out to several of the by now very interested national advocacy organizations that I regularly brainstorm with, that something is clearly amiss in terms of these still unscheduled judicial reviews in  Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings. I will hopefully get some feedback in a day or two, but in the meantime, I will redirect my increasing dissatisfaction with these matters to the appropriate channels, as well.

       

The time is ripe for serious reform in Arizona's behavioral health system. There are any number of people who need to get the hell out of the way at this time, because the patients at The Arizona State Hospital are very close to receiving the care and treatment that they deserve. Please join me today in fighting to bring these deeply needed changes about. Patients at ASH are continually being abused, by the technicians, the nurses, the doctors, and the administrators. Only direct action will rectify this situation, and I implore each and every person reading my words to get involved today. 

(UPDATE APRIL 2014: As clarified by Phoenix area ABC Ch 15's deep investigation of ASH's grossly substandard conditions, and the complicity of senior level staff in ADHS Office of Grievances and Appeals, as it stands. These two women (Burke, Ault), who were recently deposed and required to testify in at least one legislative session, are as graphically out of whack with contemporary public health law and policy, as are each and every administrative authority in the ASH facility itself; the irrefutable impacts of which have furthered all elements of staff misconduct as it has occurred at ASH for time immemorial- including highly illegal forms of physical, emotional, and psychological abuse imparted upon ASH patients by some proportion of ASH staff at all levels of employ. No aspect of my expressed concerns, including the data included above, have yet to be found invalid. But due to the grossly inept criminal negligence of these sorts of state officials, the vast majority of my good faith reports in this context were not brought to light until the last 6-10 months. This is is the state of affairs. Bottom Line.)

(UPDATE FEBRUARY 2016: As I clearly predicted in May, 2012... "The issue of reported substandard conditions, and my related allegations concerning the danger, illegality, and inhumanity is one that I am willing to suspect may fairly well worry the ones in power at the Hospital  and at ADHS, particularly if I am able to prevail in seeing that my claims to this effect are meaningfully investigated and addressed in full accordance with the law.... Liability issues aside, I also suspect that at this point in time, the staff as ADHS are possibly afraid of losing their jobs, or better yet, of the possibility that some of them, including physicians and administrators, fear the very real possibility of criminal charges...." (see in the above content). And as the record shows today, my predictions have come to fruition. From the evidence proving that substandard care practices and general conditions have been present at ASH for no less then 10-15 years, to the possibility that at least some persons working in relation to the operation of ASH [including persons in ADHS', as well as at the Hospital itself] will in time face due consequences [as in losing their jobs], I will only say again:                       

I hate to say I told you so.

But I told you so. 

                                                                 

And that said- with the veracity of my concerns circa 2011-2012 in mind- I will again reiterate my lawful demand that each and every administrative official involved in the now recognized scandal- at ASH and beyond into ADHS, the AZ Office of the Attorney General, and so on as may apply- be brought before the public (and/or the courts) and held accountable as per the letter of law for their grossly malfeasant participation in furthering the substandard conditions at Arizona's sole long term public mental health facility. For the fact remains, all elements of their given misconduct has and is still imparting abject abuse and associated harm to the entire ASH patient community. There is no just cause whatsoever for allowing persons such as those included in the above article (Kara Burke, Margery Ault), or individuals such as longtime ASH legal counsel Joel Rudd and current ASH Chief Medical Officer Dr. Stephen Dingle (and on the list goes), to be left out of the process of oversight, accountability, and greatly needed reform. Specifically, this with respect for the history and ongoing evolution of bringing ASH up to standard as public health care facility. In terms of those people now entrusted to oversee the so-called improvements at ASH, namely current ASH CEO Dr. Aaron Bowen, and current ADHS Director Dr. Cara Christ, I can only say AGAIN: Do the right thing. Now.)

paoloreed@gmail.com