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Civil Rights Concerns At Hospital
I am a representative of Vermont Psychiatric Survivors, Inc, a peer support network here in Vermont. We are writing to provide information regarding an issue that may have direct importance to some of your readership.
An entire coalition of psychiatric professionals, family groups, consumers and consumer advocacy groups has been fighting discrimination against those with psychiatric labels by Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, which is relocating its inpatient psychiatric services from the center of main campus to a satellite campus in Colchester, Fanny Allen.
Many people are not aware that after its 1995 merger, Fanny Allen remains a corporate entity which leases its property to Fletcher Allen. The property is owned by an order of Catholic nuns, and retains its Catholic identity, currently providing rehabilitation, orthopedic, and elder care services.
According to a statement in Fletcher Allen documents, “The lease prohibits Fletcher Allen from conducting activities at the campus which conflict with the teachings, traditions and canon or other law of the Roman Catholic Church.” This reference to teachings means the 70 guidelines contained in the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. For full details, see: http://www.usc.edu/hsc/info/newman/resources/chc/contents.html. “The Ethical and Religious Directives are concerned primarily with institutionally based Catholic health care services. They address the sponsors, trustees, administrators, chaplains, physicians, health care personnel, and patients or residents of these institutions and services. The moral teachings that we profess here flow principally from the natural law, understood in the light of the revelation Christ has entrusted to his Church. From this source the Church has derived its understanding of the nature of the human person, of human acts, and of the goals that shape human activity.
“The Directives have been refined through an extensive process of consultation with bishops, theologians, sponsors, administrators, physicians, and other health care providers...the Directives will be reviewed periodically by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, in the light of authoritative church teaching, in order to address new insights from theological and medical research or new requirements of public policy.” In the questions by the Health Care Division to Fletcher Allen for the pending Certificate of Need required for the construction of the Mental Health Unit at Fanny Allen, Fletcher Allen refused to provide a copy of the lease, calling it proprietary information. In answer to the direct question, asking whether there were any limitations in the lease “on the types of services that can be delivered on the Fanny Allen campus? Please delineate,” Fletcher Allen avoided the direct question with this answer: “There is nothing in the Fanny Allen lease that would interfere with or limit the operations of the mental health services planned on that campus.”
Now it has become clear that in this issue, as with many others, Fletcher Allen has been deliberately evading the true implications of placing clinical services at the Fanny Allen campus in Colchester. There are many aspects to the way that Fletcher Allen has secretly proceeded with its plans, but on this particular issue, the discrimination affects broader stakes than psychiatry alone.
Apart from our own opposition to being moved off-site to make room for the “Renaissance Project,” VPS has taken the position that it is also wrong for Fletcher Allen, a non-sectarian organization, to place clinical programs on leased property where religious ownership allows for limitations on medical care based upon religious beliefs. It is a significant concern for the psychiatric faculty in its right to practice medicine freely, and a direct concern for many of our consumer peers as well.
Our own direct agenda is focused on the overall stigma of removing psychiatry from the full integration of care on the main campus, and the many different medical safety and treatment issues related to the separation from emergency back-up and specialty referrals; Fletcher Allen’s answer to all of these issues has been the same: transport to the main campus for back-up - with no regard for the medical risks or trauma of transport (often in shackles) for patients. (The Chief Medical Officer of the hospital, Dr. John Brumsted, actually told a reporter from the APA Psychiatric News that a heart attack patient would receive just as good emergency services as if they were home and had a heart attack! And there we were, thinking a hospital was an upgraded level from being at home)!
The psychiatric faculty at Fletcher Allen is under a gag order from speaking out regarding its concerns, thus others of us in the groups opposed to the move have had to organize the public opposition.
Now that this particular issue has emerged clearly, we thought that your readership would want to be made aware of this controversy. This issue is something interested Vermonters need to write to their state representatives and to Governor Dean about as soon as possible. At this phase of the debate, what would help the most would be phone calls and letters from as many individuals and groups as possible, deluging the Health Care Administration, making them aware that they could even be running into legal delays over this, and that they be pressed to demand that Fletcher Allen turn over the lease before proceeding with its application, and so that our governor, who is pulling some of the strings behind the scenes on this one, realizes this could mean political trouble for him.
Because of Vermont Psychiatric Survivors’ position on civil rights, we wanted to share this information with the gay community, for those who might see the lease restrictions as a threat to appropriate health care and full access to necessary health information. While there is no explicit language making such a threat, the historical context might make it as issue in which readers would be interested in joining with other civil rights groups in objecting to Fletcher Allen placing an inpatient mental health unit on property where a church controls how health care is delivered.”
The addresses to write letters would be: Martha O’Connor, Chair, Public Oversight Commission, PO Box 532, Brattleboro, VT 05302; cc: Susan Gretkowski, Health Care Administration, 89 Main St., Drawer 20, Montpelier VT 05620, and Governor Howard Dean, MD, 109 State St., Montpelier, VT 05609-0101.
Anne Donahue
Representative Vermont Psychiatric Survivors
Rutland, VT