Arizona State Hospital panel limited

Legal review scrutinizes volunteers for advocacy

The Arizona Department of Health Services has reined in an Arizona State Hospital volunteer committee after a legal review concluded the committee violated its authority.

The state health department’s legal review found that human rights committee members “blurred the lines” between committee work and personal advocacy, ADHS Director Cara Christ said in a Feb. 13 letter to committee members.

The 9-member volunteer committee meets once a month to hear grievances and issues raised by patients, their families and other community members. The state hospital treats “forensic” patients who are declared criminally insane and mentally ill patients who are declared a danger to themselves or others.

As a result of the review, ADHS implemented new procedures that prohibit committee members from accessing patients who are declared criminally insane. The committee also has been prohibited from meeting at the Arizona State Hospital, at 2500 E. Van Buren St.

Other changes forbid committee members from advocating, becoming sponsors or guardians, or assuming financial responsibility for patients. The review also imposed strict guidelines on committee communications.

ADHS officials insist the changes are aimed at protecting patients and their personal information.

“We have been working with the human rights committee to ensure patient confidentiality is always kept strictly confidential,” Christ said. “There was finally an escalation of events (and) we determined we did need to do a legal review.”

But HRC Committee Chair Sharon Ashcroft said the state is targeting the committee.

“They are trying to crush us out of existence,” Ashcroft said. “This is like swatting a mosquito with a bazooka.”

Christ said in her letter that committee members have become personally involved in forensic patients, actions that “blur the distinct roles of HRC member and personal advocate.”

Christ’s letter and an attached addendum cited 15 examples or actions involving Ashcroft since June 2015.

Ashcroft used her position to gain access to the hospital to see a patient who had not signed a release nor included the committee chair’s name in the patient’s visitor log, Christ said in the letter.

Ashcroft told The Arizona Republic she went to see the patient as a visitor, not as a committee chair. She added that the patient told her he put her on the visitor’s list.

“He wanted me to come play cards with him,” Ashcroft said, adding she believes she followed protocol.

A second example cited by Christ involved a November committee meeting when a patient “verbally attacked” the hospital’s chief medical officer by “mischaracterizing a matter that occurred over twenty years ago, had been resolved and had nothing to do with the hospital,” Christ wrote.

The hospital’s chief medical officer was reprimanded in 1997 by the Arizona Medical Board for incidents involving female medical residents in the earlyto-mid 1990s. The doctor has received no reprimands by the board since then.

Christ said in the letter that Ashcroft “liked” a version of the story on a media outlet’s Facebook page and commented on the article with “incorrect information.”

Ashcroft defended her actions, stating that the patient was speaking during a public comment period and relied on public documents to form his complaint. She added that his comments were cut short by the hospital’s CEO during the November meeting.

Ashcroft added that she was pressured to not include the patient’s comments in official meeting minutes.

Christ said that the legal review was completed by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. The state’s Medicaid agency, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, also sent a letter to Ashcroft raising similar concerns.

In addition to prohibiting access to patients who are criminally insane, Arizona State Hospital’s new guidelines require all official committee emails be sent to a single email address. All committee members must sign these emails: emails from individual committee members will be rejected.

Christ said the changes are to ensure patients’ personal information is not improperly shared.

“We want to make sure we are being more proactive about the things we are doing to protect our patients,” Christ said.