Pt. 2: Driving People Crazy at Taxpayer Expense

[Guest guest]

Driving People Crazy At Taxpayer Expense

Scandal in American Health Care

Part II: The Techniques of Influence Buying©

 

By Judy Fitzgerald

 

We are all aware of the revolving door between private business and

government employment. The top officials (the people with the power

to

close down an abusive facility, stop dangerous products, etc.) are

rewarded by private business after leaving government service if they

do

what business wants while in government service. There is also a

revolving door between service in the military and private business.

One

army chaplain who had funneled quite a few patients from Ft. Huachuca

into Ramsey Canyon Hospital and Treatment Facility was rewarded upon

retirement from the military with a job at the hospital he had

funneled

so many patients into. His base salary was between $28,000 and

$32,000 a

year. In addition the hospital made his car and house payments. All

this was for part-time employment!(1)

 

Abusive for-profit psychiatric hospitals and programs make it a rule

to

target at least one sympathetic judge in each area where they set up

shop

in order to guarantee a steady stream of court-ordered referrals and

payments. In return the judges receive speaking fees, travel

expenses,

or have buildings name after them. One childcare business organized

and

turned out the children it its care for an election rally in support

of

one friendly judge.(2)

 

There are other ways to buy influence. Ramsey Canyon hired as its

attorney the man who was also the attorney for the city's only

newspaper.

This newspaper refused to run ads of the local Survival Support Group

and refused to run articles critical of the hospital.(3) Another

consultant hired was a member of the Ethics Board of the Arizona

Psychological Society.(4) The Society ignored the hundreds of

complaints

against this hospital. Still another consultant hired by the hospital

was a state employee responsible for Medicare surveys, who also ran a

private consulting business on the side, hiring herself out to the

very

facilities she was supposed to be monitoring for fraud and abuse! At

one

time the hospital was even listing her as an employee on the list of

staff it gave to OCHAMPUS*.(5) (CHAMPUS - Civilian Health and Medical

Program of the Uniformed Services. OCHAMPUS is the agency in Aurora,

Colorado which oversees the CHAMPUS program.)

 

Ramsey Canyon even claimed in its ads(6) to have a United States

Senator's aide on its Board of Advisors. This is illegal. A check

with

Common Cause revealed that a woman by this name was not and never had

been an aide to this senator. The senator later identified her as a

one-time consultant.(7)

 

How difficult has it been to fight this problem of abuse, conflict of

interest, and fraud? Very difficult. The agencies and organizations

which are supposed to be protecting the public are not doing so. If a

hospital fails a survey by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of

Hospitals (JCAH), it is given the name of a business which, for a

hefty

fee, will bring it up to standard so it can pass. The hospital almost

always passes after paying for this " service " . JCAH accreditation is

no

guarantee of quality or protection for the public.(8) It is nothing

more

than a sophisticated extortion and protection racket.

 

OCHAMPUS does not do its own surveys. These are contracted out to an

organization called Health Management Strategies (HMS). HMS has been

reputable; OCHAMPUS has not. In one case three different HMS teams

found

serious, on-going violations and deficiencies at the Ramsey Canyon

Residential Treatment Center in 1990, 1991, and 1992. This hospital

was

only decertified as a CHAMPUS provider when Representative Pat

Schroeder

asked Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney why, in view of hundreds of

complaints, this hospital was still a CHAMPUS provider.(9)

 

In some cases OCHAMPUS has even aided and abetted the abuse of

patients.

Ft. Huachuca MPs were used to track one woman both on and off post

after

she refused to enter Ramsey Canyon. When she appealed to OCHAMPUS for

help, someone there called the post commander and told him she

belonged

in a psychiatric hospital.(10) She avoided involuntary commitment to

one

for-profit psychiatric hospital by voluntarily admitting herself to

another in a large city 70 miles away. When her doctor there found

out

what was going on, he was so angry that he wrote a letter stating that

(a) she was not suicidal, (b) she did not need medication, and © the

only depression she suffered came from the way she had been treated by

the military and civilian authorities.(11)

 

In June, 1993, a 13-year-old girl, a ward of the state who had been at

the hospital for a year, died on a hospital hiking trip after her

complaints of not being able to breathe were ignored for over an

hour.

Autopsy revealed that she died of overmedication and heat stroke.

Ramsey

Canyon disputed the autopsy results and hired its own independent

pathologist. DES removed the remaining CPS children from the facility

the day the autopsy results were released and temporarily suspended

the

RTC's license and is seeking permanent revocation. This action does

not

prevent the Ramsey Canyon RTC's from accepting children from other

sources.

 

The abuse continues, but so does the fight to stop it.

 

***********************

 

For additional information on the problem of psychiatric abuse and

fraud

in the United States, the following is recommended:

 

THE PROFITS OF MISERY: HOW INPATIENT PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT BILKS THE

SYSTEM AND BETRAYS OUR TRUST. Hearing before the Select Committee on

Children, Youth, and Families, House of Representatives, 102 Congress,

2nd session, Hearing held in Washington, DC, April 28, 1992.

 

" Mental health: Families suffer as DOD struggles to cure system's

ills "

(AIR FORCE TIMES), " Horror Stories: When mental hospitals mistreat

CHAMPUS patients " (Navy Times), and " Mind Games: Families fall victim

to

mental health care system " (ARMY TIMES), August 17, 1992, Army Times

Publishing, reporter Soraya Nelson.

 

AGAINST THERAPY by J. Moossaleff (Jeffery) Masson

 

TOXIC PSYCHIATRY by Dr. Peter Breggin.

 

" Truckee Meadows " , ABC DAY ONE investigative piece, Forrest Sawyer.

Truckee Meadows is a for-profit psychiatric hospital in Nevada which

is

very much like Ramsey Canyon and many more around the country.

 

Notes and References

 

1. Contracts on file with Arizona Department of Health Services.

 

2. " VisionQuest probed in 2 states, " ARIZONA DAILY STAR, Beverly

Medlyn,

24 November 1985. David Ruben, principal owner and founder of Ramsey

Canyon Hospital and Treatment Center worked for VisionQuest from 1979

to

1985. Ruben told the first HMS survey team in 1990 that his current

program at Ramsey Canyon is closely modeled after VisionQuest. (Pat

Schroeder letter to Dick Cheney.) Indeed, the complaints against

VisionQuest and Ramsey Canyon are virtually identical - the same

carelessness in staffing, the same racial and sexual slurs, the same

obsession with client' sexual lives, the same use of various

confrontational tactics which results in punishment for clients, etc.

 

3. One ad which was deemed libelous had been drafted with the help of

the

ARizona Center for Law in the Public Interest. It detailed what

constitutes psychiatric abuse and is against the law in Arizona. (You

Have Been Mistreated If Mental Health Caregivers Have: refused use of

the

telephone, taken away your clothing, refused you access to your

charts,

refused visitation by family, clergy, or attorneys, ... " Joyce Simo

and

other members of Ramsey Survivors Support Group met with the

publisher of

the SIERRA VISTA HERALD and informed him of the ties of this paper's

attorney to Ramsey Canyon. The ad was then screened by another

attorney

who allowed it to run but without the Ramsey Survivors' Support Group

caption.

 

4. Joyce Simo May 20, 1991 letter to Boyd Dover, Arizona Department

of

Health Services, p. 4-5.

 

5. April 24, 1991 meeting between Ramsey survivors and two

representatives (Mike Carroll and Mattie Wilson) of OCHAMPUS in Joyce

Simo's living room. Two employees of Arizona Department of Health

Services were also present to tell about the lies and cover-ups within

DHS. When Mattie Wilson read a list of employees then at Ramsey

Canyon,

both of these DHS employees informed her that this nurse was an

employee

of the state. Both Ms Wilson and Mr. Carroll misrepresented

themselves a

investigators. AT the time Ramsey Survivors was unaware that OCHAMPUS

does not do its own surveys.

 

6. Ad in SIERRA VISTA HERALD, special Sunday supplement, September 29,

1991.

 

7. Inquiry from Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families to

Senator Dennis DeConcini concerning his relationship to Marian Bauhs.

 

8. An investigator for the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and

Families.

 

9. Schroeder letter to Dick Cheney, 29 June, 1992.

 

10. Sources from Ft. Huachuca who asked to remain unnamed because of

threat to military careers.

 

11. Doctor's letter as well as this woman's complaint on file with

Ramsey Survivors' Support Group and various state, federal, and

private

agencies.

 

12. " Center accused of neglect in 'tragic' girl's fatal hike, " THE

ARIZONA REPUBLIC (Phoenix), Carol Sowers, 2 July 1993, front page.

" Center's license suspended but officials dispute autopsy results, "

SIERRA VISTA HERALD, Christine Kroeger, 2 July 1993, front page.

(This

is misleading: officials of the state of Arizona aren't disputing the

autopsy results; Ramsey Canyon is.) " State license of care facility

is

suspended. Cochise County health center censured in death of hiker,

13, "

THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR (Tucson), Howard Fischer, 3 July 1993, 1B.

 

Editor's Note: This is the second of a two part article. Part I

on " The

Techniques of Abuse appeared in CHANGE 233.

 

******************

 

These articles were written in the summer of 1993. In September of

1993

the longest and most expensive administrative law hearing in the

history

of Arizona was held as David Ruben fought the loss of that DES

license.

The judge ruled in Ruben's favor. Perhaps it is merely coincidence

that

this judge used to work for the law firm which Ruben hired to

represent

his him and his facility.

 

By this time DES had had enough of Ramsey Canyon and Dr. Ruben and was

determined to protect the children of this state. DES appealed the

judge's decision. In January 1994 a 3-judge appeals panel sided with

DES,

criticized the judge's decision on several grounds, and upheld the

revocation of Ramsey Canyon's DES license. Under Arizona regulations

(since changed), once the DES license was lost, the revocation of the

DHS

license the facility also needed was automatic, and Ramsey Canyon was

closed.

 

The abuse and fraud continues in other places. But so does the fight

to

stop it.

 

Judy Fitzgerald

11 August 1998