Hospital refuses patient release

davekc

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There is a lot more of that going on than what people think. Some of it is liability issues and some are hospitals that need to make patient quotas.
 

cheri1122

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I don't know what you expect, but I reserve judgement until more facts are available. This is just one side of the story - the hospital is legally gagged and cannot present it's side.
But hey, you go ahead and make up your mind based on what the parents have said. Because parents always know better than the doctors, eh?
There's probably some truth in the liability concern, but 'patient quotas'? Really? You suppose that hospitals resort to kidnapping patients to achieve a quota? I don't think even Micheal Crichton would go for that one, lol. :p
 

Turtle

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I don't know what you expect, but I reserve judgement until more facts are available. This is just one side of the story - the hospital is legally gagged and cannot present it's side.
Actually, if you do some digging, you'll find out that what is presented above is pretty much it - no distortion of facts, no missing facts to fill in the voids, no Paul Harvey Moment at the ready.

It's a pіssing contest between Tufts University and Harvard University (Boston Children's Hospital), and a show of power for Child Protective Services (the Massachusetts Department of Families and Children).

You know how when you take your car into the repair shop and tell them to replace brake pads and rotors, and a half hour later they come out and tell you, "After looking at the brakes, we noticed that you need a new alternator, power steering pump, a valve job, a transmission rebuild, and five new ball joints."? This is like that. The girl goes to Boston Children's Hospital for the flu, and the doctors there have issues with her list of current medications and the diagnosis which prompted them, because they at the Harvard teaching hospital are of the medical philosophy that mitochondrial disease is a phantom disease that doesn't even exist, because its symptoms can often look like other things.

Mitochondrial disease is a genetic disorder with some strong biological scientific evidence supporting it, but some doctors prefer to go with the more old school traditional diagnosis of child abuse (since sometimes the effects of mitochondrial disease can look like someone has been abused) or Munchausen Syndrome (or Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy), which is what the Boston Children's Hospital went with in this case. They diagnosed the girl with the psychosomatic disorder Somatoform, which is even more rare than Mitochondrial disease, and also charged the parents with child abuse for allowing the Tufts doctors to treat a mental illness as if it were a physical illness. The Boston doctors concluded, within hours of her being admitted for the flu, that her physical symptoms were primarily caused by psychological disorders. "Mitochondrial disease does not exist," they told the parents.

They were so convinced of their immediate diagnosis that they did not consult Tufts University Medical Center (still haven't, to this day) and simply classified it as a mental disorder and child abuse, and called Child Protective Services. When a mandatory reporter (doctor, teacher, whomever) makes a report (whether knowingly or unknowingly false) it’s next to impossible to stop the wheels from turning. Judges more often than not side with the reporter. It instantly becomes a situation of guilty until proven innocent, which is where this family finds itself.

Three days after being admitted for the flu, the medical staff at BCH handed Justina’s mother a list of 'guidelines' for her care that included 'strict limitations' on the family’s involvement and a clause ruling out second opinions.

When the mother objected and tried to take Justina off to nearby Tufts for a pre-arranged appointment with her regular specialist, child welfare workers were called in, and within 24 hours, a judge ruled Justina was to be removed from the custody of her parents and that she had to stay at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families was given custody.

She was immediately admitted to the medical center's psychiatric ward, a place with a not exactly stellar reputation, where she's been for nearly a year. Ex Boston Children's Hospital nurse Kathy Higgins wrote an unsolicited letter to the judge, saying Justina's treatment was akin to 'torture.' She has written to the judge, and testified in other cases about similar situations with patients. Barry Pollock, a semi-famous top Boston lawyer who has represented other children and families caught up in similar cases at the hospital, is calling for the renowned medical center's psychiatric ward to be closed down. The hospital has a really bad track record in the psych ward.

The Boston Globe has been reporting on this story for a year, and last month reported the judge in the case wanted to give the parents the opportunity to demonstrate their fitness to regain custody of their daughter and eventually bring her home. Demonstrate their fitness. Awesome. But this is the same judge who back in November issued a gag order preventing the parents from speaking publicly about the case. After a Feb 13th hearing, where the judge ruled the girl needs to stay put, the parents decided to ignore the gag order.

The hospital, of course, is hangin' tough on the whole, "because of privacy concerns we cannot comment on a specific patient's care." But they did release a statement saying, "The hospital does not keep patients in its care against the direction of the custodial guardian."

The "custodial guardian" being, of course, uhm, you know, the Massachusetts Department of Families and Children.

It's cases like this that prove Child Protective Services, in whatever titled incarnation they can come up with, is just pure evil. They do far more harm than good. For every case that can be made for their existence, seventy-eleven can be shown where they screwed the pooch. They take children away from parents based solely on accusation rather than due process. Then it's up to the parents to prove their own innocence, or fitness as parents, often at great cost, financially and emotionally. The whole notion that the State can sit in judgement as to whether or not you are fit to be a parent is patently absurd. If you can reproduce, then you're fit to be a parent. It's that simple. And you should be able to raise your children any way you see fit. Period.
 

davekc

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I don't know what you expect, but I reserve judgement until more facts are available. This is just one side of the story - the hospital is legally gagged and cannot present it's side.
But hey, you go ahead and make up your mind based on what the parents have said. Because parents always know better than the doctors, eh?
There's probably some truth in the liability concern, but 'patient quotas'? Really? You suppose that hospitals resort to kidnapping patients to achieve a quota? I don't think even Micheal Crichton would go for that one, lol. :p

I don't think I would call it "kidnapping". More of a policy of admitting people whether it is needed or not.
'60 Minutes' report critical of Health Management Associates - LancasterOnline: News
 

cheri1122

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I don't think I would call it "kidnapping". More of a policy of admitting people whether it is needed or not.
'60 Minutes' report critical of Health Management Associates - LancasterOnline: News

In the 5 years that I worked at a major hospital, there were quite a few patients admitted solely because the insurance wouldn't pay for treatment unless they were formally admitted - but none were kept against their will, or for any length of time.
Hospital admin and doctors will deny it till the cows come home, but insurance controls medical decisions and care more than the doctors do.
That's why I don't like Obamacare - it gives insurance companies even more power, and they already have too much, IMO.
 

cheri1122

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Turtle: the belief that if you can reproduce you're fit to be a parent is what I consider pure evil, myself.
Munchausen by proxy certainly does exist, and when it happens, [indeed, when any child abuse happens], who should intervene to protect the child? In a civilized society, somebody has to, IMO, and somebody has to decide what is and isn't abuse. Who should take on that job?
 

Turtle

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Turtle: the belief that if you can reproduce you're fit to be a parent is what I consider pure evil, myself.
If you're going to make a statement of moral judgment like that, you need to explain it.

The name of the game is survival of the species, and on this planet the way that's done is through propagation of the species. There is no homework involved, no written test, no license to obtain. It's a natural biological right, hardwired into the DNA, with the only requirement being that you be able to reproduce.

Munchausen by proxy certainly does exist, and when it happens, [indeed, when any child abuse happens], who should intervene to protect the child? In a civilized society, somebody has to, IMO, and somebody has to decide what is and isn't abuse. Who should take on that job?
Society is who decides what is and is not abuse, but in a civilized society it must be done with due process. The way it's currently set up in our civilized society is, someone can simply accuse you of abuse, with no evidence at all, and you lose your kids until you can prove your fitness as a parent. Talk about pure evil. In a civilized society, a charge of abuse or neglect must be highly tempered by the fact that you as a parent have the natural right to care for and raise your offspring any way you see fit, and taking someone's children away needs to have the same high standards as a murder conviction.

We have has laws in this country regarding child abuse since the 1600s. Over the years those laws have had other laws added to them to give what is now known as CPS more and more power. The stated goal of CPS is to reunite children with their families, yet that rarely happens, because of the blatant core antifamily mindset of CPS. Removal is the first resort, not the last. With insufficient checks and balances, as Brenda Scott writes in her book Out of Control: Who's Watching Our Child Protection Agencies, "the system that was designed to protect children has become the greatest perpetrator of harm." Children of poor families are 70 times more likely to be removed from the home than children of families of means. Being poor should not mean you are not a good parent or that you do not love your child, or that your child should be removed and placed with strangers, but poor families are certainly being targeted, because someone, somewhere in CPS has said, "Children shouldn't be forced to live like that." All parents are capable of making mistakes, and making a mistake should not mean your children are to be removed from the home. Even if the home is not perfect, it is home, and that’s where a child is the safest and where he or she wants to be, with family.

The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (part of the US Department of Health and Human Services) in 1998 reported that six times as many children died in foster care than in the general public (in their families) and that once removed to official “safety”, these children are far more likely to suffer abuse, including sexual molestation than in the general population. These are 1998 numbers, and they're worse now.

Maltreatment per 100,000 Children
CPS Custody
Family Custody
Physical Abuse16059
Sexual Abuse11213
Neglect410241
Medical Neglect1412
Fatalities6.41.5

Clearly, the "feel good" intentions of CPS is all fluff on the surface, and actually does more harm than good. This is why the SOP of "guilty until proven innocent" is what is pure evil, that taking children away from their parents without a very high standard of doing so is pure evil, and why giving CPS absolute power has resulted in absolute corruption. We gotta protect the chiiiildren! Only we're not.
 

cheri1122

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There's a pretty big gap between the ability to reproduce and fitness to parent - at least as far as refraining from abuse kind of fitness. Nature doesn't care if individuals perish, because the numbers will make up for it, and the species will continue. Society cares, because that's what we're supposed to do: protect the vulnerable among us. Child abuse is self perpetuating: abused kids grow up to abuse their own kids, because, as Dynamite pointed out, "that's how we were raised". [Wait - he wasn't talking about abuse!] It's also a problem society can pretty nearly eliminate, in time, like illiteracy. And I don't think we should stop trying.
I also don't believe that any agency can remove kids based on unsubstantiated allegations - how many kids have died after CPS investigated and found insufficient cause to proceed? It's hardly rare.
In the case cited here, the facts were placed before a judge, who decided the hospital had credibility. Maybe he was wrong - it's happened before, but I find it hard to believe that it happens all the time, everywhere, that kids are taken without sufficient reason. I believe the judge was privy to facts not shared with the public, and made a decision based upon them.
I also note that this case involves a teenage girl, and there is plenty of case history on the oddities that have mysteriously afflicted teenage girls.
In this particular case, you may be right, and the hospital is overreaching, and the judge is just rubberstamping what CPS imagines to be the case - but I can't believe that situations like it are pandemic.
Foster care is a whole 'nother ball of wax: the financial reward tends to attract the kind of people who shouldn't be parenting, along with the ones who do a great job of it.
It's a sticky problem, all the way around - but I'm afraid we do have an obligation to protect the children, same as the disabled, elderly, and sick. That's what makes us civilized.
 

Turtle

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Retired Expediter
I also don't believe that any agency can remove kids based on unsubstantiated allegations
It's absurd, I agree, but it's true nonetheless. It's certainly something that can be researched and verified. It happens with alarming frequency. The reason is, reports of abuse are categorized into three broad disposition categories - substantiated (founded or valid - different states use different terms), unsubstantiated (unfounded or invalid), and indicated (possible, probable) - risk analysis-dependent. Childwelfare.gov (US Department of Health and Human Services, where the states get their marching cues), which is the guidelines handbook for CPS agencies, states that an investigation must take place for every report, and "CPS staff are mandated by law to determine whether the report is substantiated or founded (meaning that credible evidence indicates that abuse or neglect has occurred) or whether the report is unsubstantiated or unfounded (meaning that there is a lack of credible evidence to substantiate child maltreatment—but does not mean it did not necessarily occur)." So even if it is unfounded, they assume that it could have occurred, anyway. If a determination is "unsubstantiated," with no credible evidence to substantiate the report, then risk-factor analysis must take place, because 'no credible evidence' is not necessarily evidence that it did not occur.

So the mindset going in is that a report will either be substantiated, or where there is a lack of evidence, they are to be skeptical that it didn't happen regardless. "A major part of the initial assessment or investigation includes determining whether there is a risk or likelihood of maltreatment occurring in the future." So much for due process. Throwing due process out the window is written right into the process.

Risk factors that indicate maltreatment actually occurred despite no evidence for it occurring, and/or that it is likely to occur in the future, include income level, cleanliness of the residence, whether one or both parents have jobs, physical and mental health of the parent (caregiver), the parent's coping and problem solving ability, whether or not firearms are present in the home, relationships outside the home, quality of relationships inside the home, power and issues of control within the home, evidence or suspicion of substance abuse. The determine things like, does the alleged abuser show any obsession with the alleged victim? Does the alleged abuser have a criminal record? Does the alleged abuser show any signs of depression or desperation? I don't care how well trained a caseworker is, you can count on one hand how many are actually qualified to make those assessments. It's like the Wisconsin State Police being able to determine if a truck driver is fatigued if he has a TV or one-handed magazines in his bunk area.

They ask the parents questions like:

  • Have you ever felt you should cut down on your drinking or drug use?
  • Has a physician ever told you to cut down or quit the use of alcohol or drugs?
  • Have people annoyed you by criticizing or complaining about your drinking or drug use?
  • Have you ever felt bad or guilty about your drinking or drug use?
  • Have you ever had a drink or drug in the morning ("eye opener") to steady your nerves or to get rid of a hangover?
  • Has your drinking or drug use caused a family, job, or legal problem?
  • When drinking or using drugs, have you had a memory loss or blackout?
Caseworkers are told to expect lies to every one of those questions. The questions are asked knowing they'll likely be lied to, but in order to gauge the reaction to the questions. If the reactions don't meet with the questioner's approval, the suspicion level is raised.

The most important thing that is impressed upon caseworkers is to err on the side caution, and if there is a chance, no matter how remote, that a report of abuse might be true, to assume that it is, and to then focus "on gathering comprehensive information rather than trying to identify solutions, which is best left for later in the casework process." So right up front they're getting settled in for a long process, one that mainly consists of them justifying their actions.

- how many kids have died after CPS investigated and found insufficient cause to proceed? It's hardly rare.
It's actually quite rare. Sure, you hear on the news where some kid died despite CPS visiting the home 20 times in the past. The reason it makes news is because it rare. What doesn't make news are the kids who are perfectly fine after 20 and 30 visits, and nothing ever happens to them. The numbers in the table above show that children left in families suffer abuse far less than they do under the control of CPS. But another reason that it's rare is that they rarely find insufficient cause to proceed. 78% of reports of abuse to CPS result in the child or children being removed from the home, at least temporarily. Like I said before, removal is the first resort, not the last, because they will err on the side of maybe. That's their standard operating procedure.

In the case cited here, the facts were placed before a judge, who decided the hospital had credibility.
No, CPS decided the hospital had credibility, and the judge decided CPS had credibility. It was CPS, not the hospital, who went before the judge seeking the warrant. Judges routinely just sign off on a CPS request, because the welfare of the child is preeminent, and the rest can be sorted out later in court while the parents prove their innocence.

Maybe he was wrong - it's happened before, but I find it hard to believe that it happens all the time, everywhere, that kids are taken without sufficient reason. I believe the judge was privy to facts not shared with the public, and made a decision based upon them.
All the time, everywhere? Not all the time, everywhere, but close. It's routine. You never heard of a parent losing their child because they swatted the child on the butt in the grocery store for throwing a temper tantrum? Kids have fallen down on the playground and have been taken from their parents because the ER doctor suspected something else happened. It's then up to the parents to wrangle with the legal system to get their child back.

Foster care is a whole 'nother ball of wax: the financial reward tends to attract the kind of people who shouldn't be parenting, along with the ones who do a great job of it.
And who runs foster care? CPS.

It's a sticky problem, all the way around - but I'm afraid we do have an obligation to protect the children, same as the disabled, elderly, and sick. That's what makes us civilized.
Yeah, we do. But like I said, we're not. We're playing at it, with feel good intentions, but those intentions have had, and are having, unintended consequences that are worse than the problem to begin with. Look at the numbers. Those are the numbers direct from the US Department of Health and Human Services, not some crackpot wackadoodle Web site.

If you find this sort of thing unbelievable, or repugnant, I would encourage you to do some research on it. I've done quite a bit, but I've also had an enormous amount of it handed to me by a friend of 40 years or so who is with CPS. She was a caseworker for many years, and is now the director of CPS in my hometown. She used to work in a large city, where she says it's far worse (removing children without any real evidence) than it is here in a small town, where common sense and intelligence has the upper hand (both from CPS and from judges). The fact is, a dysfunctional family is the norm. That's the problem with families, they consist chiefly of people, not a single one of whom is perfect.
 

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
CPS, and all agencies with similar names, are government functions. There in lies the problem. Government is there to grow government and amass power at the expense of the governed. There should have NEVER been federal involvement, except maybe to handle interstate kidnapping, in the first place. This is strictly a local issue and should be handled at as low a level of government as possible. Better yet, get government out of it. As it stands, these agencies tend to do far more harm than good.
 

LDB

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
CPS is often a very dictatorial agency, taken with their own power and control over families. With many of them the mantra is guilty until proven innocent. That isn't to say there aren't good people in various CPS agencies, just that like many government agencies they are often out of control.
 

Tennesseahawk

Veteran Expediter
In the 5 years that I worked at a major hospital, there were quite a few patients admitted solely because the insurance wouldn't pay for treatment unless they were formally admitted - but none were kept against their will, or for any length of time.
Hospital admin and doctors will deny it till the cows come home, but insurance controls medical decisions and care more than the doctors do.
That's why I don't like Obamacare - it gives insurance companies even more power, and they already have too much, IMO.

Working in a major hospital, you should also know about the egos floating around. Egos that are likely to make the wrong decision, WILLINGLY, in order to get stroked. I believe this may be one of those decisions.
 

Turtle

Administrator
Staff member
Retired Expediter
Here is a rather in-depth Boston Globe piece about this case. I encourage you to read it carefully, taking note of the red flags of those in the so-called Child Protective arena, especially of the comment...

"They call it a “parent-ectomy.”

The child custody battle over Justina Pelletier is the most extreme of a handful of unusually contentious cases over the last 18 months involving Boston Children’s Hospital and the state Department of Children and Families. Most involve a disputed medical diagnosis, charges of parental misconduct filed or threatened by the hospital, and the inability of the state child-protection agency to provide effective intervention.

A medical collision with a child in the middle - Metro - The Boston Globe

After you read that, and it's important you read it first for the proper background context, read this whopper, which is the latest development on the case, (paying particular attention of the comment, "If she had somatoform disorder, then her condition would have improved," he said. "She's not gotten any better."), the results of the hearing on Tuesday, Feb 24th, to determine if Justina stays in psychiatric care (where she's getting worse), goes to foster care (where she'll be as safe as the The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect numbers say she will be), or goes home (where she wants to be and where The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect numbers say she should be).

Guess where she was ordered to go? :rolleyes:
 
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