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| Pervaiz Akhter. Punjab, Pakistan. Primary attending psychiatrist Arizona State Hospital 1997-2015 |
Roughly one month ago, the Phoenix area ABC news affiliate, KVNX/Ch15, confirmed my 2012-2015 reporting of the presence of staff smuggled contraband onto the grounds of Arizona's sole long term public mental health care facility, the Arizona State Hospital, in a prime time news report aired to millions of Arizona citizens (see "AZ State Hospital dealing with dozens of recent contraband incidents." By David Biscobing, ABC News Ch15, May 5, 2016.). And less then 3 days ago, ADHS Director Cara Christ chose to characterize ASH as a "Center of Psychiatric Excellence." As though the news reported by ABC Ch15 has no merit. Blatantly engaging in the same flow of inaccurate information about the issues that are even today causing abject medical practices at ASH that her predessesor engaged in.
A standard program of denial. As a matter of standard practice.
Etc.
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DISCUSSION Part II was, in fact, the first source to report the issue of contraband at ASH, when I did so in spring, 2011, by submitting a formal document describing the matter to officials with the AZ Department of Health Services, during the earliest phase of my time as an ASH patient. I have likewise published at least four primary blog articles about the issue, the first in April, 2012, which have and continue to be a focal point of (reader) attention to the blog.
Did my efforts in the context have any impact? No. 100% consistent with the bare bones fact that all elements of my good faith reporting have also been patently ignored. By the ones running Arizona's overall public health care system. Leading, in no uncertain terms, to ongoing abuse of the rights and associated care needs of ASH' disabled patients.
It's that simple. It's that bad.
It is- ergo- no surprise at all to learn in this most recent ABC report that the issue of staff smuggled contraband has yet to be resolved, for over the entirety of my five years of experience in seeking to see that overall problems at ASH are addressed once and for all, I have had next to zero success in the context. Yes, the newest state officials overseeing ADHS/BHS took action in spring 2015 to hold several former facility administrators accountable (seven people in total were terminated) for their undeniable involvement in the long standing corruption at ASH; I contend, however, that this action amounts to little else then a band aid approach to massive hemorrhaging of the ADHS/BHS system across the board, and that those persons who lost their jobs with ADHS represent little more then scapegoats, in effect. The fact is, none of the ones fired for their unlawful activities in this context were ever criminally charged or otherwise held legally accountable for their known misconduct, despite some proportion of their wrongdoing being criminal in nature, under state and federal law; which I feel diminishes the likelihood of deterrence with these issues in mind, paradoxically preserving the ongoing existence of administrative ineptitude and the associated suffering of ASH patients.
On a brief aside, I am compelled to mention that beyond my formal education level and achieved credentials, (BA 1996, University of New Mexico, Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude; MA 1999, University of Arizona), I also attended the James A. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona, 2001-2004, on a full ride scholarship that afforded me on the basis of my life long commitment to public interest advocacy. I am in no way overly proud of my educational achievements; I know first hand that many, many people who have no opportunity to even attend college succeed in facing and overcoming far greater challenges. I only mention this aspect of my personal life in order to clarify the fact that, when the time arose for me to begin embarking on exposing the deplorably substandard care practices and conditions at ASH, I was fairly well prepared via my formal education to meaningfully disclose the full implications of how and why these issues are so rampantly present at ASH, in direct relation to bureaucratic ineptitude throughout the ADHS construct.
I didn't want it. The knowledge base that I have about ASH. I didn't seek to make trouble. I only sought the basic services that this facility is required to provide to each and every citizen of Arizona who in any way finds themselves included in the operation of ASH.
In this sense, it was the grossly unlawful misbehavior of ASH staff
that put me in the position that I am today.
And it impossible for me to have to sit back and accept the barebones fact that these issues are still occurring. As a matter of standard practice.
It also of note in my memory, to recall that a visiting legal scholar who lectured to my law class in Torts I, fall 2001 (facilitated by Professor Ellyn Bublick), about the specific realm of medical malpractice, mentioned in passing the facility that I wound up in approximately ten years later, by stating:
"Don't even get me started on the Arizona State Hospital up in Phoenix!"
At the time, I had never heard of ASH, and given that I am not a native of Arizona, I had no idea whatsoever that she was referring to a mental hospital. Indeed, it wasn't until just around five months into my overall time at ASH that I came to remember hearing this attorney make that statement; an arousal in my memory bank that occurred in direct relation to my becoming increasingly dumfounded by the blatant willingness of senior ranking ASH medical and administrative staff to turn a blind and ear towards patient abuse, staff misconduct, and literally every other element of the substandard care practices and conditions there.
And consistent with every other detail of my knowledge base specific to the abusive conditions at ASH and the demented character of oh so many ASH staff, I will just say it again:
I COULD NOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP IF I HAD TO.
In spring, 2011, in a phone conversation that I had with a mental health advocate based in Berkeley, CA, during my time as a patient/client/consumer seeking mental health services at the Arizona State Hospital, that person- who has sought anonymity, for she is also affected by serious mental illness, and did in fact spend nine months at ASH before my arrival there- expressed the following sentiment:
"If those people had any idea who you are or what you are capable of, they would have never allowed you in there."
At the time, I was still hampered by own personal struggles with major depressive disorder and early recovery in the process; as such, I had little understanding of why this good hearted soul felt that way. All I knew was that I- a person witnessing on a daily basis abject abuse of patient rights and related staff misconduct- was sensing the need for someone to stand up and address these issues. I did not, however, sense credence at that early juncture of my overall recovery in believing that I was the best resource in this context. But over the ensuing months, as my head cleared and a renewed interest in my surrounding environment emerged (after years of virtual hibernation), I did in fact come to understand that I could provide meaningful evidence about the deeply substandard care practices at ASH, and the involvement of high ranking ASH staff in furthering these issues as a matter of standard practice. Only days before the above described phone conversation, for example, my then attending ASH psychiatrist, Dr. Laxman Patel, had responded to my reporting staff misconduct that I was incapable of ignoring in my own right because it was causing me distinct trauma by stating in no uncertain terms (verbatim):
"What do you expect? This is the state hospital."
Therein fostering my motivation to do whatever I had to, in order to set these people straight. As though, as per this so-called physician's opinion, the Arizona State Hospital is justified in continuing to provide substandard mental health care to the American citizens committed to ASH in order to recover their best interests and wellbeing as persons acutely affected by mental illness. Just one more example, I later came to realize, of the fact that a majority proportion of ASH staff don't feel that the seriously mentally ill clientele at ASH deserve the same level of care and treatment as anyone else, in any other health care facility. In later months, I had other staff psychiatrists characterize my sense of duty in this context as "grandiose" and other such skewed disrespect for the simple fact that I was not seeking anything other then to do the right thing to the best of my given ability.At that time, and in ironic thanks to the imbeciles who sought to call my efforts into question , I realized that:
A) Someone had to do something about it;
B) Nobody employed at ASH or in ADHS'BHS was willing to do anything about it;
C) And that it thus fell upon my to do whatever I could to expose these issues to the best of my given ability. In defense of my own fundamental rights and care needs, and those of my seriously mentally ill and disabled patient-peers.
I also knew that I would be putting my own health and wellbeing at some degree of risk, but I in no way fathomed- who would?- how dangerous such a mission would be in fact- very real potential harm- while I was still there at ASH, subject as I unknowingly was (at the time, very early in my thirteen long months at ASH) to the equally real menace posed by ASH administrators, and their lower ranking counterparts in ASH's medical staff.
In late August, 2011, for example, within hours of certain ASH executives coming to realize that I was engaging in shedding light upon the presence of grossly unlawful staff misconduct via the state's own grievance system, I was unlawfully relocated from the ASH treatment unit that my referring Tucson based psychiatrist had worked to see that I would be treated on- Palo Verde east, one of the most peaceful units at ASH at that time- to one of the most violent treatment units of the civil side of ASH, Desert Sage east. This summary transfer occurred in violation of not only state law (the Arizona Administrative Code, specifically), but even the Hospital's own protocol, and had direct involvement of former ASH CEO/Now Fired Cory Nelson and current ASH Chief Medical Officer Dr. Steven Dingle, both of whom issued and signed the formal- though obviously unlawful- transfer letter that I was served with on the day of that relocation. (And I do, of course, have my copy of that document.)
By then, I had come to refuse to be intimidated by these people, be it highly aggressive staff technicians, psychologically abusive staff nurses, shockingly incompetent staff psychiatrists, and so on into the highest offices of the ASH operation; and especially not by the on-site assistant AZ Attorney General, Joel Rudd, who- in absolute complicity with the now proven unlawfulness of ASH administrators- did in his own right engage in trying to cow me into submission by unjustly seeking to subject me to a involuntary and indefinite commitment to ASH, an action that drew the immediate attention and direct support on my behalf of human rights advocate John Gallagher.
It was, all of it, that bad. For the entirety of my time at ASH. And common sense begs the fact that my experiences were anything but unusual, this with respect for the experiences of every other patient at ASH. I have included the majority of the details in this blog, to date, and will broaden this sordid tale in my upcoming book. But given what we already know about the current operation of ASH, and the role of current ADHS officials such as Dr. Cara Christ in furthering the issues most at stake, these matters have yet to be meaningfully addressed. Ergo, my work on behalf of the ASH patient community is ongoing, because clearly, even ADHS' newest director is willing to engage in concealing the truths about the substandard conditions at ASH.
And someone has to do something about it.
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DISCUSSION Part II"Center of Psychiatric Excellence."
This is apparently the Arizona Department of Health's most recent bright idea in terms of spinning the image of the state's sole long term public mental health care facility, Arizona State Hospital (ASH), over which ADHS has direct authority and associated responsibility. This newfangled example of utter bullshit emerged in recent Arizona news, with regard for the Hospital's interest in allowing private interests access and use of the Hospital's "resources". As follows:
"The Department of Health Services says it is soliciting information on possible interest in using the campus (Arizona State Hospital) for various psychiatric services..... (including) for private psychiatric care services... According to the department, it envisions the "Center of Psychiatric Excellence" could use available property and buildings on the campus but wouldn't involve privatizing any of the state's mandated services."
(see: "Arizona Eyes Public-Private Use Of Phoenix Mental Hospital's Campus." Associated Press. Tuesday, June 07, 2016. )
The Arizona State Hospital (see "campus" above), as a matter of plain fact, is the site of what some refer to as the ugliest public mental health scandal in the last 75 years. ADHS is most directly at fault for the known shortfalls at ASH, and is- as such- deserving of immediate oversight and accountability by the federal level Department of Health and Human Services and other such superseding authorities, for it is within ADHS' executive offices that the flow of crippling ineptitude begins; the worst impacts of which land squarely on the heads of the ASH patient community. It is, as I have sought to make clear in prior essays and articles, a trickle-down effect of obviously defective agency administration, and it has everything to do with the consequences of the hyper-bureaucratic dysfunction that ADHS relies upon in order to exist.
Ergo, at the top of the given bureaucratic food chain we find distinguishable articulations of clearly inaccurate information, which primarily serve to maintain status quo and provide shelter to the ineptitude of affiliated administrators; while at the bottom of it all, in the underbelly of the ASH facility, we are aware of identifiable forms of deeply substandard health care and conditions, which deprive ASH patients of fundamental dignity, instead causing them pain, suffering, and despair, which may well lead to suicide and other like examples of instability and de-escalation specific to any patients' given diagnosis.
It is that simple. It is that bad.
"Center of Psychiatric Excellence."
This, in reference to a facility (ASH), that was formally sanctioned by the federal government at least once in the last two years on the basis of evidence to the effect that operation of said facility was falling below required guidelines. A facility so poorly operated, in fact, that a little over 1 year ago, no less then seven people associated with the substandard conditions at ASH- including but not limited to ASH Chief Executive Officers Cory Nelson and Donna Noriega, as well as an attorney working for ADHS itself, Jeff Bloom- were summarily fired on the basis of evidence proving that Hospital administrators and other like state employed health care officials were involved in a vastly wide range of unlawful misconduct, from the shredding of public documents in order to conceal the substandard conditions at ASH and associated abuse of patient rights, to perjury in terms of sanctioned inquisition seeking truthful testimony by persons required to ensure that ASH was functioning as per law and policy, and other greatly far reaching forms of administrative abuse of power.
These elements of administrative wrongdoing serve to further the grossly inept medical practices at ASH, which are spearheaded by supervisory medical staff- nurse supervisors and the chief medical officer (Dingle), for example- all of whom are complicit in allowing for the substandard care and conditions known to pose risk and harm to the ASH patient community in general.
It is that simple. It is that bad.
"Center of Psychiatric Excellence."
This, with regard for a public mental health facility which hires persons known to be sexually deviant (child sexual abuser Roger Allen Forney) and whose current Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Steven Dingle, was effectively found guilty of sexual abuse in the late 90s, causing distinct harm to his victims. This, with regard for a hospital largely employing psychiatrists native to and educated in third world countries, where human rights, contemporary standards of medical practice, and democracy in itself are literally absent; only one core factor as per my very real experiences as an ASH patient, underlying the fact that each and every ASH psychiatrist- Patel (India). Akhter (Pakistan). Lydon. Dy (Philippines). And even Dingle.- that I directly interacted with circa my thirteen long months at ASH was unable to abide by established medical practice, willing as such to flaunt law and policy.
Such physicians engage in blatantly ignoring their obligations as per the Hippocratic Oath, their given licensure in the state of AZ, and fundamental codes of health care ethics. The utter lack of moral foundation exhibited by such physicians acts as fuel to the fact that a majority of ASH staff in all levels of employ lack the requisite moral character when it comes to overseeing the care needs of highly vulnerable adults. Thereby exasperating the illness(s) that each individual ASH patient already has to struggle with on a day by day basis. I can and do willingly attest to this fact, for I experienced it my own right- on a day to day basis- during my tenure as an ASH patient in 2011-2012.
It is that simple. It is that bad.
"Center of Psychiatric Excellence."
I contend that this outrageous mischaracterization of the realities at ASH is just one more blatant example of the outrageous propaganda that ADHS Director Dr. Cara Christ and various ne'er-do-wells working under her authority so happily love to utilize in duping public awareness about the substandard care practices at ASH. Grossly inaccurate statements designed to keep the truth about ASH in the dark. In direct violation of the public trust. And entirely consistent with the flow of mistruths that former ADHS director Will "Yea Team!!!" Humble habitually spewed out whenever he issued official commentary about the operation of ASH, during that period of time, 2010-2015, when myriad and still yet be addressed issues occurring to the detriment of the ASH patient community were rampant throughout the whole of the Hospital itself. Which, I contend, they still are.
Rampant.
It is, indeed, that bad.
With the above described issues in mind, in one hot period of no more then 13 months, ADHS expects us to believe that all elements of the substandard conditions at ASH have vanished, to such a degree that today, Arizona's sole long term public mental health facility validly qualifies as:
"Center of Psychiatric Excellence.
As though we the public are that stupid. The fact is, that far from "excellent", the actual situation at ASH is just as bad as I have described it to be. This simply must be, given that any number of individuals involved in the known hellish history of ASH are still working there- from primary care psychiatrists, nursing staff, and technicians- individuals who are equally at fault for the abject practices at ASH as former ASH CEOs and other recently disciplined (FIRED!) state employees associated with operation of ASH are known to be.
Indeed, it is insulting to the mind of anyone of reasonable intelligence that these people continually emanate such ridiculously untruthful and overblown descriptions about the known realities at ASH. As if not more insulting then it was to me as an ASH patient to have so-called medical professionals- on the basis of my disability- treat me as anything less then human, not deserving of basic respect, and inherently incapable of recognizing the gross misconduct that those professionals engage in as a matter of standard practice.
Nothing short of a radical overhaul of the Hospital's overall employment pool will lead to meaningful improvement of ASH's grossly substandard conditions, and for that to happen, it will also require a intense vetting of any persons that the state of Arizona grants authority in the construct of ADHS, and consequent amelioration (betterment) of persons entrusted in that context.
Why? Because the greater tax paying public deserve far, far better; as do the families of patients who are deserving of optimum medical services provided by ADHS/BHS, and the patients at ASH themselves. Anything less is sinful, sickening to the conscience, and utterly defiant of human nature's potentially "excellent" qualities.
I cannot explain why Arizona's health care officials are still so willing to present themselves as persons still willing to impose prejudice and related stigma upon mentally ill citizens under their authority. But this is case. And it has to end.
Bottom line.
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| Cara "Tremendously Proud" Christ. Director, Arizona Department of Health Services. |
"We have seen incredible improvements at the state hospital over the past year and are tremendously proud of our team and their recovery oriented approach to patient care.”
I'll just say it.
That smile ain't gettin' you anywhere honey.
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IN CLOSING: Not just proud, this woman, but "tremendously proud". About what, exactly, God only knows. For to date, she hasn't provided the public with one shred of evidence to the effect that ASH is currently operating in abidance with established medical standards. I suspect this is the right time to clarify again that upon Cara Christ's appointment to her current ADHS position, in or about February, 2015 (to the position that she currently holds), I had no reason to question her qualities as a human being. In fact, I was just as willing at that time to believe that she would be able to meet her specific responsibilities as I was when I originally began seeking to compel state officials at ADHS agency to do the right thing when I hospitalized at ASH, and in ensuing months into years when I was establishing this blog; but as the record shows, my faith in such officials circa 2011-2015 was breached to no less degree then it was when I turned to my primary care psychiatrists at ASH in order to compel them to do the right thing. I thus advised Dr. Christ when I first communicated with her in March, 2015, that while I was willing to give her fair opportunity to better the patterns of abject ineptitude within ADHS/BHS that I was so familiar with to that date in time, I was also more then willing to take her to account should any evidence arise to the effect she in any way resembles her predecessor, Will "Yea Team!!!" Humble. And that is where we are today. Evidence to that effect is now emerging to the nth degree, garnering- I regret to say- this woman a nickname of her own:
Beware/fair warning to those of you who for whatever reason don't know better.
paoloreed@gmail.com
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I would really love input of any kind from anybody with any interest whatsoever in the issues that I am sharing in this blog. I mean it, anybody, for I will be the first one to admit that I may be inaccurately depicting certain aspects of the conditions
at ASH, and anonymous comments are fine. In any case, I am more than willing to value anybody's feelings about my writing, and I assure you that I will not intentionally exploit or otherwise abuse your right to express yourself as you deem fit. This topic is far, far too important for anything less. Thank you, whoever you are. Peace and Frogs.