Arizona State Hospital Facts of Life #1: Systemic Abuses of Authority and Breach of the Public Trust. Wherein, certain members of AHS's administrative staff as well as officials in the states Office of Grievances and Appeals willfully manipulate the one best means for any ASH patient to report abuses of their rights and/harms to their given wellbeing.

Since her appointment to the highest ranking position in Arizona’s public health care system in 2015, Arizona Department of Health Director Dr. Cara Christ has repeatedly stated that there have been “great improvements” in the state’s sole long term public mental health care facility, Arizona State Hospital (ASH). To date however, January 2018, Dr. Christ has never provided any evidence or information about just what these “improvements” at ASH are, in fact. This is of very real concern to the staff of this publication, given that Dr. Christ’s immediate predecessor (Will Humble, ADHS Director 2009-2015) willfully relied upon producing a pattern of overt and untruthful propaganda that served to delay a subsequent process of critically needed oversight and accountability at ASH. Propaganda that defied the realities specific to the ASH operation, including but not limited to several preventable patient deaths, the tragic murder of a young Phoenix woman, and the suppression of a wide range of patient generated concerns expressed in grievance submissions; as such, granting the former administrators of ASH further opportunity to continue operating ASH in a manner deeply harmful to the welfare of the Hospital’s patient community. 

These issues have been exemplified by the information provided in this blog since 2012, as well as in a number of scathing investigative findings of the staff of ABC Ch15 circa 2013-2015. The following article was originally published sometime in the first twelve months of the life of this blog, PJ Reed The Arizona State Hospital Patient Abuse. We are republishing this information as one means to remind our readers of how dismally substandard the operation at ASH was circa 2010-2012, and in order to raise consideration as to whether in fact any legitimate improvements have in fact come about since Dr. Christ was granted directorship over Arizona’s public health care system.

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INTRODUCTION: Arizona State Hospital administrators, physicians, nurses, and behavioral health technicians will as often as not openly abuse the rights of their patients in order to preserve substandard practices, rather than risk being held accountable for their wrongdoing The problem is systemic and endemic in all senses, and no matter how much good faith effort any one patient puts into trying to address wrongdoing when it occurs, Hospital staff will engage in systematic suppression of and even retaliation against that patient for taking such action. 

I don't want to risk being overindulgent in terms of simply bitching and moaning about my personal opinion about the Arizona State Hospital (ASH). It's a safe guess that nobody in their right mind (no pun intended) would find much pleasure in being hospitalized for 13 months, and of course, no hospital is perfect. But indeed, ASH is like no other hospital that I have ever spent time in, and this includes the other psychiatric hospitals I spent time in prior to my arrival at ASH. In my opinion, ASH is nothing short of a safe haven for abusers and incompetents, truly a place where otherwise unemployable mental health professionals can go in order to get away with all sorts of unlawful conduct. I have in recent weeks come upon a number of well researched critiques showing that state mental hospitals  are "snakepits" for patient abuse and substandard practices, as follows: 

              "Numerous state psychiatric hospitals have recently been exposed for violations and/or deficiencies in patient care and safety, including several that have come under U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation. The reports show that these facilities are not safe, sanitary or rehabilitative places." (S. Wagner, Director of Litigation and Prosection, The Citizens Commission on Human Rights. November 24, 2007)

The time has come for the citizens of Arizona to be made aware of the vast irresponsibility of ASH administrators and clinicians. Each and every patient at ASH is  a human being, and as such, somebody's son or daughter, father or mother, brother or sister, and so on. To allow the wrongdoing to continue is simply wrong, and I encourage anybody who is interested in looking more closely at these issues to get in touch with me. I have a very reasonable body of sound evidential material that supports all aspects of my allegations, and in time, I will do what I can to get it all on-line.

But at the moment, as a matter of getting to the meat of my current situation as a recently discharged ASH patient who has ongoing business with the rat bastards who are most responsible for the wrongdoing there, I am going to sum up four important examples of my experiences at ASH, as follows via Facts #1:

      Fact #1) Administrative abuse of authority, fundamental violations of constitutional and human rights, clinical abuse of authority and related violations of standard codes of medical practice and procedure.

(Originally published April 01, 2012)

There are plenty of very well established laws and related standards that precisely state how federally funded, state and federally licensed public hospitals are to manage the flow of treatment of their patients, applicable to the lowest level employees to the highest ranking executive staff. Licensureship of such facilities is regulated in very strict terms, and the oversight assigned to state agencies such as the Arizona Dept. of Health Services is supposed to be taken very seriously. Not at ASH, however, and apparently, not in the case of the Arizona Dept. of Health Services.

In late May, 2011, following about 4 weeks of very confusing clinical mismanagement of my flow of treatment makes a story in itself in (but which I will be handling later in terms of my writing)), I refused to cooperate with Cindy Froelich, who is a representative of ASH' legal office (which operates directly under the authority of Joel Rudd of the Office of the Arizona Attorney General), when she attempted to unlawfully coerce me into signing a legal document that I did not have to sign in the first place and had little to no information about in the second place.

Beyond my unwillingness to sign any documents that I was not well familiarized with (regardless of any requirements to do so), Ms. Froelich had no connection whatsoever to my ASH treatment team, nor to my legal status at ASH, for my court ordered treatment was issued under the authority of a Pima County court in Tucson, and when I refused to sign the document, she threatened me with an immediate discharge to homelessness. 

Later that day,  a process of intense retaliation and coercion was initiated against by a clinical team represented by Dr. Pervais Ahkter and Dr Lynn Lydon (under the authority of ASH' Chief Medical Officer at the time, Dr. Steven Dingle), who first placed me under "suicide watch" for no justifiable reason whatsoever (wherein patients have to have staff members sitting within arm's length of them at all times, including while in the bathroom, etc., thereby mutilating whatever degree of dignity the patient has to a point of nil), and who furthermore initiated a legal process whereby I would have been subjected to a Maricopa County court order for at least six additional months of involuntary treatment, again for no justifiable reason, and in defiance of the fact that I was already being treated under the authority of a court order initiated in good faith in Pima County. Every aspect of this sequence of events was unlawful and in utter defiance of well established codes of legal procedure, administrative authority, and accepted medical (psychiatric) practice. I was, in sum, unlawfully coerced, lied to, threatened, and restricted; and my rights to fundamental dignity and freedom from undue restraint as a patient of ASH and client of the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS), as a citizen of the United states, and as a human being, were absolutely pissed on by each one of the individuals involved. 

Subsequently, a very reputable and hyper-competent human rights advocate initiated a grievance on my behalf, this via his own motivation because he was basically enraged (civilly speaking) by these goings on, but the central investigation was conducted by Dr. Steven Dingle, who was himself a party of the chief allegations stated in the grievance itself. Herein, another vivid example of gross, banal ineptitude, shared by each and every one of the individuals involved in the overall sequence of this affair. 

Today (April 09, 2012), after almost a full year of brutally mismanaged administrative bungling by ASH' and the ADHS Office of Grievances and Appeals (wherein all aspects of the investigative conduct were compromised), I am still awaiting word on a scheduling date for this entire matter to be reviewed in court by a representative judge with the AZ Office of Administrative Hearings. I had to maintain a vigilant stance for many long months in terms of not letting this sequence of events be swept under the proverbial carpet, and in doing so, I was subjected to other very real forms of clinical and administrative retaliation (which I will illustrate in shortly). 

If ASH and ADHS authorities had had their way, this whole matter would have been ignored, and as such stands as a graphic example of the systematic manner in which these agencies of state government virtually condone administrative and clinical abuse with no regard at all for the well being of the involved patient. All of the above named individuals involved subjected me to this sequence of events with no hesitation, and it was clear to me that they were going about the entire process as though it were standard procedure. 

That said, this misconduct was by no means exclusively designed for me and me alone to experience, that is simply an impossibility (I was not subject to a conspiracy), and the behavior of the ones involved underlies my deeper concerns with respect for the well being of all ASH patients and their families. 

On a closing note: Dr. Dingle, meanwhile, was promoted to some nature of administrative position within the greater department of health services, despite his involvement in the cover up of Jesus Murietta's escape, and as such, in the horrific murder of April Mott (not to mention God knows how many other like scandals relating to the patients at ASH and the greater community, in general.

                

IN CLOSING: The entirety of this sequence of events to date has been nothing short of absolute injustice and administrative ineptitude to the Nth degree. That ASH and ADHS woudl go to such great lengths to deny the actions of Elaine Traylor and protect her, rather than me, the patient, is sickening, and I cannot overstate the implications of this one single affair. Without a doubt, physical abuse occurs at ASH daily, and the vast majority of it is never so much as meaningfully reported, much less addressed, in fact. 

Please help me put a stop to it, and feel free to contact me via the following link at any time.

DATELINE 2018: It is clear to me through very recent communications I have had with Hospital sources that the handling of patient generated grievance submissions are still being mishandled by those state employed individuals directly responsible for ensuring that state administrative codes of law are adhered to. Very much as with the patterns of negligence that I experienced during my time at ASH. One bright line example of such failures has to do with established time line requirements, whereby the Arizona Administrative Code (law) dictates very specific deadlines for grievances to be investigated and resolved. I find this nature of neglect representative of abject dereliction of duty in the context of the public trust.

paoloreed@gmail.com