***Conflict of Interest Between the Morton Plant Mease Hospital / BayCare Health System Corporation and the Pasco County, Florida Sheriff’s Department***

 

I could have died on September 2, 2014, because of an illegal partnership and conspiracy involving a dangerous conflict-of-interest between the Pasco County, Florida Sheriff’s Department and a supposedly not-for-profit powerful hospital corporation called Morton Plant Mease Hospital / BayCare Health System.  A Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputy responded to my 911 call, which I made while seeking help for my medical condition, and he came into my home and abducted me.  He took me away from my home under the false pretense of promising to take me to a hospital, himself, instead of calling for an EMS unit with trained paramedics to medically evaluate me.  The Deputy never did take me to a hospital, which I desperately needed.  This was done in order for the Pasco County, Florida Sheriff’s Department to illegally financially help the above-mentioned hospital corporation.  The terrible chain of events that followed could happen to any innocent citizen and clearly violated multiple Federal laws, as well as my Constitutional Civil Rights and liberties.

The Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputy responded to my 911 call that I made while I was suffering from a severe medical crisis, in which my blood levels of three vital electrolytes—potassium, magnesium, and calcium—were so critically low that I could have died from sudden heart failure.  I had been severely sick from an insidious stomach flu for several days that had left me with projectile vomiting and relentless diarrhea to the point that my body was in peril of collapse from the loss of electrolytes.  Without enough electrolytes, the heart can cease beating, and my brain was already shutting down to the point that even though I was awake and aware of my surroundings, my brain had begun “dreaming” while awake, and these nightmarish hallucinations were superimposing themselves on top of my waking reality around me.  I had called 911 for help, and when the Sheriff’s Deputy arrived, I told him that I felt very sick and I needed to go to a hospital.

The Sheriff’s Deputy heard me say that I was sick and that I requested to go to a hospital, and he even wrote this into his official incident report afterwards.  He told me that he would take me to a hospital if I went with him right away, so I trusted him and got into his patrol car to be taken to a hospital.  However, this is where the definition can clearly be said to become “abducted.”  The Sheriff’s Deputy promised that he would take me to a hospital for medical treatment of my critical illness, but he chose not to take me to any one of the three local emergency rooms that were located closest to my home.  Instead of taking me to a hospital, he took me to a psychiatric jail-cell prison that had no doctors, no emergency room, no diagnostic laboratory for blood tests, no treatment facility—NOTHING!  There was nothing at this facility but locked doors and orderlies who guarded the prison.  For several hours, I was locked up inside of that psychiatric prison!  The orderlies refused to call for an ambulance to help me, even though I was embarrassingly physically ill with symptoms of my stomach flu right in front of them, and they were aware that I was critically ill!  I even had to be given an adult diaper twice because of my severe stomach flu, and both times I begged them to please let me see a doctor because I was so sick that my brain was shutting down, and my body no longer had sufficient motor control over itself.  The authorities working at the psychiatric prison refused to provide any medical treatment for me, even though my body was critically ill, and I could have died from sudden heart failure from my critically low electrolytes.

I was in a psychiatric prison, but I did not have any psychiatric disease, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, as a psychiatrist would verify within his report the next day.  The psychiatrist would validate that I was suffering from a life-threatening, physical medical condition that had caused my brain to lose basic functioning, since vital electrolytes had become so critically low.  The Sheriff’s Deputy had lied about taking me to a hospital, and this was why he did not call for an ambulance to take me to the emergency room.  He wanted to personally take me to a mental jail-cell facility so as to appease a powerful not-for-profit hospital corporation here in Pasco County, Florida, that has a special financial partnership with the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department.  I would later find out after doing extensive research that the Sheriff’s Department had a financial incentive to add me as part of its “body count” sent to the psychiatric facility, in order to help the not-for-profit hospital corporation to continue to evade Federal income taxes with the Internal Revenue Service, as well as to acquire more profits associated with Insurance fraud and Medicaid fraud.

Even though I was critically physically ill to the point where I could have died, I was forced to spend several hours locked up in the psychiatric prison.  I asked the orderlies several times to please let me see a doctor, but they would only scornfully tell me that I was not allowed in the administrative area around them, and to shut up, go away, return to the inmates’ quarters, and just sit there and watch TV.  In fact, there would not be a doctor there on site at that facility to see me for at least 14 hours, until working business hours the next day.  I was dying from a critical emergency medical condition causing severe dehydration with electrolyte levels that had crashed to life-threateningly, critically low levels, and it was possible that I would not be alive the next morning without emergency medical treatment.   During those several hours, I could feel my body shutting down even more as my illness became more critical.  The hallucinations caused by my electrolyte deficiency that were shutting down my brain were terrifying to watch.  I am still haunted to this day by the memories of being forced to watch monsters coming out of the walls and through the windows, while continuing to be physically ill due to critically low electrolyte levels and receiving no treatment.  In a last, desperate attempt to finally be taken to an emergency room, I approached the orderlies for at least the seventh time to request to be taken to a hospital, and I told them that the next time they saw me, I would be in a crumpled heap, unconscious on the floor.  The reason that I am alive today is that they finally got scared enough by the prospect of my death while in their custody, and they called for an ambulance.  Unfortunately, they sent me to a hospital, which was owned by the same company, even though it was 21 miles away, and on the other side of the county.

Although there were three hospitals with emergency rooms closer to the psychiatric prison, I was shipped very far away to their own corporately-owned hospital because they knew that they had violated the Federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act for not having sent me to an emergency room immediately upon my request, several hours beforehand.  The other hospitals where they refused to send me were much closer to my home, but were owned by different corporations.  The Morton Plant Mease Hospital / BayCare Health System corporation did not want these hospitals to find out that I had been denied access to their emergency rooms by both a Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputy and their own corporation.  They didn’t want the information to get out that there is a dangerous and illegal partnership between their hospital corporation and the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department.  I have discovered official documents that outline a plan that would use tax-payer funded Sheriff’s Deputies in full uniform, while on duty, to transport sick people directly to Morton Plant’s psychiatric jail-cell prison facility.  Response times to urgent 911 calls regarding legitimate police emergencies are being delayed in Pasco County while deputies are busy using their patrol vehicles as a taxi cab delivery service for the Morton Plant corporation.

My research has proven that this psychiatric jail-cell prison facility services the entire area of Pasco County and parts of Hillsborough County, including the north Tampa area.  Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputies can pick up people from any location within Pasco County, Florida and drop citizens off at this psychiatric facility, which serves people who have psychiatric disorders, drug or alcohol addiction, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, parenting skill issues, and much more, under the wide banner and multiple facilities of the BayCare Behavioral Health System.  Whenever a Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputy responds to a 911 call and discovers a person who even remotely appears to fit any type of the above description, the Deputy can take that person to the facility to help fulfill the “quota” that the not-for-profit hospital corporation needs to meet in order to satisfy the I.R.S.’s demand for the corporation to “provide a community benefit.”  Unfortunately, I did NOT fit the above criteria because I was physically ill with a genuine medical condition and not a psychiatric or behavioral issue.

It is ILLEGAL for anyone with a physical medical condition to be delivered to this facility because the facility, itself, does not meet Federal or state law requirements to be called a hospital!  This practice of delivering medically ill patients to the Morton Plant Recovery Center violates hospital antitrust laws.   The facility is acting as a central “holding tank” for people who call 911 for help.  Instead of rightfully being immediately taken by ambulance to an emergency room that is closest to a citizen’s home, deputies are delivering people from all over the entire area of Pasco County and North Hillsborough County to this one facility as a collection point.  If the citizen is seen as having a medical condition and not a psychiatric condition, they are then being transported to the corporate main hospital 21 miles away, and for some people this would be on the opposite side of the county from where they live and away from their own neighborhood hospital.  However, this Morton Plant Mease / BayCare Health System corporation is actively promoting the Morton Plant North Bay Hospital Recovery Center (psychiatric prison) as a legitimate hospital, contrary to law, and they are knowingly and willfully doing so as an attempt to continue to evade paying Federal income taxes by trying to justify this facility as a nonprofit branch of their hospital corporation!  By using the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department’s Deputies and patrol cars to deliver physically ill patients to this facility, they are further violating the law by committing conspiracy with the county Sheriff’s Department so as to be provided a free form of transportation for residents all over Pasco County to be delivered to their corporate facility, and all at the taxpayer’s expense of using deputies who are on duty and driving county patrol cars as a personal taxi delivery service for Morton Plant Hospital.  I will provide a link to their own official documents, which will attest to and prove the existence of this conspiracy.

Anyone of you reading this document who lives in or visits Pasco County or northern Hillsborough County could easily be caught in this same dangerous trap.  Both the Sheriff’s Department and the hospital corporation have violated the law by basically abducting a citizen who should have been put into an ambulance and taken to the local emergency room for immediate care and treatment of a life-threatening illness.  Instead, I was lured by the Sheriff’s Deputy into his car with the promise of delivering me to a real hospital, but was kept locked up against my will in the corporation’s psychiatric prison, even though I repeatedly kept asking to see a doctor, which they did not even have available on their premises.  Doctors at the actual hospital eventually determined that my condition was so critically grave that I had to be kept in the hospital for an additional 24 hours of E.K.G. monitoring of my heart after my electrolyte levels had returned to normal.  They were concerned that I was still at risk for a dangerous cardiac event, even after two days of intravenous therapy; yet, I had been forced to languish in a psychiatric prison owned by this same hospital corporation for many hours without any form of medical care to satisfy their corporate greed at the risk of my life.

The scam in place here in Pasco County is that in order for the hospital corporation to keep their 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt status with the I.R.S. and to not have to pay corporate income tax, is that they need a certain quota of patients to be delivered and processed through their hospital system in order to satisfy the I.R.S.’s requirement of “providing community benefit,” so as to qualify as a non-profit corporation.  Hospital administrators have admitted in their own official documents that transportation is a crucial issue in bringing individuals into the Morton Plant North Bay Hospital Recovery Center, which in reality is their psychiatric prison facility and not any kind of a “hospital.”  Officials have chosen to use the Sheriff’s Department to funnel potential patients who had innocently called 911 seeking help for a medical crisis to instead be abducted from their homes and delivered to the Morton Plant psychiatric prison.  Victims who enter this prison are routinely incarcerated for a minimum of three days with no legal right to leave the premises or object to anything that is done to them.  This includes being forcibly administered dangerous psychiatric drugs, which are unnecessary for people suffering from an acute medical crisis, such as a critical electrolyte deficiency or a diabetic emergency.  These patients could be critically ill just as I was, with no need for psychiatric care, but desperately in need of medical care from a qualified physician.

The prison staff may eventually decide to send a person to a real hospital if they choose to, assuming that the individual is still alive.  However, the only hospital that the innocent victim would be sent to is the Morton Plant facility, which also owns the psychiatric prison.  This works out great for the hospital corporation in acquiring patients from all over Pasco County, as well as portions of Hillsborough County, who would never have chosen to go to Morton Plant Hospital, otherwise.  An ambulance can now be used to transport critically ill patients past three other local hospitals to travel ALL the way over to only the Morton Plant Hospital, located 21 miles away.  Fortunately, I survived the several hours of being locked up in a psychiatric prison against my will instead of being rushed to the emergency room.  Somehow, I also survived the unnecessarily long trip to Morton Plant Hospital while my body continued to deteriorate with uncontrollable trembling due to a critical medical crisis.  Hopefully, by exposing this conspiracy, other innocent citizens can avoid this nightmare, and needless deaths can be prevented.

When I finally arrived at the emergency room and had my blood tests performed, the results came back verifying that I had a critical illness of having three vital electrolytes—potassium, magnesium, and calcium—all being critically low.  The emergency room physician knew that I had a physical medical condition causing my brain to shut down and making me delusional, but she decided to treat me as a psychiatric patient instead of a physically ill patient, and she put me under the Baker Act.  This law labels a patient as having a psychiatric condition (which I did not have) and essentially takes away all freedom of decision making regarding medical care and the liberty to leave the hospital facility for any reason, including being transferred to a hospital closer to one’s home and family.  The emergency room physician knew for three hours before using the Baker Act that I had critically low levels of electrolytes and was informed by my husband who arrived at the hospital that I had only a medical condition and not a psychiatric condition causing my symptoms.  The doctor chose to Baker Act me once she realized that the Sheriff’s Deputy had illegally transported me without using the Baker Act as required by law.  In Florida, in order for a person to lawfully be removed from their home and taken to any psychiatric facility, the person must first be placed under the Baker Act by the law enforcement officer.  The Sheriff’s Deputy NEVER utilized the Baker Act when he illegally took me from my home and neglected to take me to a real Emergency Room at a legitimate hospital.

Law enforcement officers are NEVER allowed to diagnose people.  They must first call an Emergency Medical Service unit to allow a patient to be evaluated by a licensed paramedic or emergency medical technician.  I was refused this treatment, which violated my Constitutional Civil Rights to receive emergency medical treatment.  My Involuntary Commitment was performed to hold me prisoner at the Morton Plant Hospital, and not for any medical reasons.  The physician kept me from exercising my right to transfer to another hospital closest to my home, which was a much newer facility with more advanced treatment options.  I would have gone directly to my preferred hospital, which was not owned by Morton Plant / BayCare, if the Sheriff’s Deputy had followed the law.  He should have allowed EMS paramedics to examine me as soon as I requested to go to the hospital.  Clearly, Morton Plant Hospital has succeeded in training their employees and Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputies to do whatever is necessary to assure that their revenues continue to be maximized at the expense of their patients and family members, even if it means holding patients prisoner.

My husband and daughter had to travel 42 miles round-trip each time they came to see me or discuss my condition with Morton Plant’s medical personnel.  Our local hospital is only seven miles away from our home.  There was never any good reason to forcibly take me to Morton Plant Hospital except to make money for this greedy corporation.  Even if the emergency room physician tries to make the excuse that I was Baker Acted because my life was in danger, this is not an excuse for using the Baker Act just to keep me held prisoner at her corporately-owned hospital!  I would have been in very safe hands with the I.V. fluids starting their eight hour process of a slow drip while being put back into an ambulance with the I.V. going and driven to my own local hospital’s emergency room just down the street from my house!  The Baker Act was never implemented until I requested to be transferred to another corporation’s hospital.  The Baker Act is supposed to be used ONLY for psychiatric conditions, which I did not have, and the psychiatrist who would examine me 10 hours later ordered the Baker Act to be removed because I did not have a psychiatric condition.

In the pdf of “The Baker Act Manual,” on page 221, left column, it states:

“Major violation of federal and state law by hospital staff and emergency physicians often revolve around the following issues:”

” * Misuse of the Baker Act”

” * Improper use of the Baker Act”

“The Baker Act cannot be used to justify the examination and treatment of non-psychiatric medical conditions or to conduct diagnostic procedures or laboratory testing without the express and informed consent of the person or his/her legally authorized substitute decision maker.  The Baker Act provides no such authority to provide medical examination or treatment, other than the required physical examination within 24 hours following admission to a receiving facility.  Neither can the Baker Act be used to hold a person against his or her will at a hospital for medical examination or treatment; it can only be used for initiating psychiatric examination and psychiatric treatment.“

“Conversely, many persons with serious medical problems display what may appear to be psychiatric symptoms.  These ‘mock symptoms’ often disappear when the non-psychiatric medical condition is appropriately diagnosed and treated.  This interrelationship between general medical and psychiatric care systems is crucial to appropriate care.”

http://www.dcf.state.fl.us/programs/samh/mentalhealth/laws/BakerActManual.pdf

The Baker Act should NOT be used as a means of keeping a patient trapped in a corporately owned hospital!  This was a very effective strategy to prevent another hospital from becoming aware of the very questionable actions taken by the Morton Plant Hospital corporation.  My medical records will now permanently indicate that I have been placed under the Baker Act, regardless of the illegitimacy and illegality of the action.  I believe that I was placed under the Baker Act because the emergency room physician realized that I had been brought to Morton Plant Hospital from the psychiatric prison called Morton Plant North Bay Hospital Recovery Center, which was owned by the same corporation.  The Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputy illegally started this process by abducting me from my home.  The emergency room physician decided to continue this outrageous assault on my Civil Rights granted to me as an American citizen in order to protect both her hospital corporation and their illegal use of the Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputies involved in their conspiracy.  Now, because of my medical record, I will be forever haunted by the presence of this illegal use of the Baker Act against me.  Any future employer and all insurance companies will have to be told about the presence of this psychiatric label upon me, even though I have never even had a psychiatric condition.  This unfairly marks me as a liability to any company wanting to hire me or to any insurance company considering selling an insurance policy to me.

After doing extensive research on the situation, there is no doubt that a severe conflict of interest and a conspiracy exists in which the Sheriff’s Department and the hospital corporation have teamed up together so that the private hospital corporation gains at the expense of the lives, health, and finances of the residents of Pasco County.  The hospital corporation is using the power and influence of the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department in order to evade paying Federal income taxes, and in return, this not-for-profit business is partnering with the Sheriff’s Department and even gave the Sheriff himself the 2012 Leadership Award from their hospital corporation, BayCare Behavioral Health.

http://www.flsheriffs.org/sheriffs/florida-sheriff-directory/pasco-county

Pasco County has also gained financially in the sum of $1,000,000.00 being gifted to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department for the fiscal 2012-2013 year to take people to the psychiatric facility in an attempt to fight drug use in the county.  It says:  “For the fiscal year 2012-2013, the managing entity will receive an additional $1,000,000.00 of non-recurring general revenue funds for the Pasco County Drug Initiative that is funded through Specific Appropriation 366.  This initiative, a consolidated effort between BayCare Behavioral Health, Inc., the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office, and the Pasco County Alliance for Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition, will provide substance abuse services in Pasco County.”

http://www.dcf.state.fl.us/programs/samh/me/Suncoast/QD1A9-13.pdf

This $1,000,000.00 comes at a time when the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department openly admits that they are not receiving enough funds to operate a county jail system to house all of the inmates, and wouldn’t it be nice to have SOMEWHERE ELSE to ship people to in hard financial times such as these, especially if they suspect a person is mentally ill, a drug addict, or has behavioral problems?  If they could find someone else (BayCare Behavioral Health System) to service these people, then it would free up the jail cells of these people, and Pasco County will not have to find funds for them out of county taxes.

http://tbo.com/pasco-county/sheriffs-office-gets-about-2m-less-than-it-sought-20131011/

It was illegal for the Sheriff’s Deputy to take me to the Morton Plant North Bay Hospital Recovery Center when I requested a hospital because I had a medical emergency and was not medically stable to be delivered to the psychiatric facility.  According to the Recovery Center’s own website:

“Acute care services are provided by the Adult Crisis Stabilization Unit and the Children’s Crisis Stabilization Unit. Programs are offered that provide a safe, healing environment for medically stable persons. These include psychiatric services through a physician and/or advanced registered nurse practitioner, psycho-educational groups, family therapy, skills training and discharge/aftercare planning.”

http://www.mpmhealth.com/Morton-Plant-North-Bay-Recovery-Center

 

It is also against the standard operating procedures of the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department’s own protocols of when to transport citizens to the Morton Plant North Bay Hospital Recovery Center.  The Sheriff’s Deputy is required to take a medically ill person to a true emergency room in an actual licensed Florida hospital that is allowed to accept medically ill patients.  In a document called “The Baker Act—A Law Enforcement Quick Reference Guide in Pasco County,” it states:

“MEDICAL ASSISTANCE:  Should be transported to the nearest medical hospital.  It does not matter if the hospital has behavioral health onsite.”

http://namipasco.org/support/the-baker-act/

 

The real money making scam going on here by the hospital corporation called Morton Plant Mease Hospital and BayCare Behavioral Health System is their attempt to evade paying Federal income taxes to the I.R.S.  However, over the past few years, it has become quite difficult for not-for-profit hospitals to maintain their 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt status.  They are needing to get help from the “communities they serve” to vouch for them by saying that they provide charitable services for the communities.

The Federal government’s website called National Institutes of Health states:  “Not-for-profit hospitals, in order to maintain their tax-exempt, or “charitable,” status, under section 501(c)(3) of Federal Internal Revenue Code, have long been required to provide benefit to the community that they serve. Recent changes in legislation now require that such hospitals explicitly and publicly demonstrate community benefit by conducting a community health needs assessment (CHNA) and adopting an implementation strategy to meet the identified community health needs. (IRS).

“Section 9007 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Public Law 111-148 (the “Affordable Care Act”), created section 501(r) of the Code adding new requirements effective beginning with the first tax year on or after March 23, 2012, that 501(c)(3) hospitals must conduct a CHNA at least once every three years in order to assess community need and annually file information (by means of Schedule H (Form 990)) regarding progress toward addressing identified needs. (IRS). This can involve partnerships with other clinical, public health, and population health focused organizations. Section 9007 furthermore established tax penalties for hospitals that do not comply, as well as reporting requirements regarding national compliance on the IRS. (IRS) .”

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hsrinfo/community_benefit.html

The CHNA report that is required by the I.R.S. is online for people to view.  I have read through the 372 pages of lame excuses of their corporation’s own explanation of why they should remain tax-exempt by providing community benefits to the public.  In the 372 pages, they discuss utilizing the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department for helping them.  They discuss how not having transportation is a big issue in getting people from the public into the psychiatric facility’s doors, but that the County Sheriff’s Department can help them since a Sergeant from the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department was interviewed about the Department’s help that they could offer, and he made two statements:

***(The Sergeant from the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department is listed as interviewee # 7, from page 64 of the document.)

From page 363:  “7.  Need more affordable health care, mental health, and counseling services for the community, particularly the large homeless population.  Community needs more transportation options.”

The same Sergeant from Pasco County Sheriff’s Department states on page 364:  “7.  BayCare is best at providing needed services.  NAMI offers good support groups, but they do not get funding from the state for the free services that they offer.  The crisis intervention training at the Sheriff’s office is expanding which will help to identify more people in need of mental health services—this will in turn increase the need for mental health resources in the community, and get people the help they need and keep them out of the legal system.  Also, FACT team visits people’s homes with mental health issues to make sure they are taking their medication.”

http://www.mpmhealth.com/workfiles/CHN/Assessment/Morton%20Plant%20North%20Bay%20Hospital%20and%20Recovery%20Center%20Community%20Health%20Needs%20Assessment.pdf

 

UPDATE:  Morton Plant Hospital / BayCare Health System corporations have illegally removed the above mentioned document from the internet.  Section 9007 (a) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act states in Internal Revenue Service Code Section 501 (r)(3)(B) that:  “requires that a CHNA (i) take into account input from persons who represent the broad interests of the community served by the hospital facility, including those with special knowledge of or expertise in public health and, (ii) be made widely available to the public.” 

On July 8, 2015, Senator Marco Rubio’s Office was informed of this corporation’s illegal activity of removing the CHNA report from the internet, and Senator Rubio informed the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service.  As of late October, Morton Plant / BayCare corporations are still illegally withholding this document from the public.  By law, this document MUST be made widely available to the public, and it was up on the internet until my website started publicizing it and exposing the document’s shocking evidence of the conspiracy that exists between the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department and the hospital corporation.  One can only wonder why a hospital corporation would choose to knowingly and willingly violate Federal law and remove this document from the internet when it had once been there for all to read.

It is crucial for government oversight agencies to have access to and be able to read this document.  The Pasco County Sheriff’s Sergeant’s quote stating that deputies are being trained to “identify” more people in need of mental health services is a confession that it is now standard practice for deputies to illegally diagnose citizens on their own without consulting with licensed Emergency Medical Technicians or Paramedics first about whether or not a citizen has a psychiatric or an emergency medical condition causing their symptoms.  It is illegal for law enforcement officers to ever diagnose people, but the verb “identify” clearly states that law enforcement officers are indeed actually playing “doctor” and are actively diagnosing people.  Whatever type of training that law enforcement officers are receiving that is for “crisis intervention” for mental health situations should NEVER  be permitted to stand as the equivalent to the education and training in medicine, such as that which is given to physicians and even licensed Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics.

Clearly, the Sheriff’s Deputy who responded to my 911 call absolutely did NOT have enough training to identify the fact that I was about to die from an emergency medical condition right in front of him.  He should have  immediately allowed me to be taken to my own local emergency room for proper medical treatment.  Law enforcement officers are not licensed by the state of Florida to perform medical or psychiatric diagnoses, and are supposed to rely on qualified medical professionals for this function.

The Sergeant from the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department stated in the CHNA report that the community needs more transportation options.  He went on to say that Pasco Deputies are being trained to identify more people who can be taken to the psychiatric facility.  This would help the county by keeping potential inmates out of overcrowded jails and reducing legal costs.  Financial payments given to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department in the form of grants from Morton Plant / BayCare are an additional incentive for police involvement in this conspiracy.

Sheriff’s Deputies are vital to the hospital corporation because they are uniquely permitted to enter someone’s home in response to a 911 distress call and legally abduct a person by using the Baker Act.  This never occurred in my particular case.  The deputy completes his responsibility to Morton Plant / BayCare when he or she delivers the individual to the psychiatric facility.  They are then free to abandon the poor citizen, who may well be in need of emergency medical care, at a facility that has no diagnostic capabilities or doctors of any kind.  Eventually, if the imprisoned patient lives long enough, a psychiatrist will see the individual and prescribe medications.

The patient will not have to worry about transportation in the future because nurses who work for the FACT team will drive to the patients’ homes to administer the medications and ensure proper enforcement of the psychiatrist’s orders.  All of these subsequent visits, when a patient is seen by anyone associated with Morton Plant, will be applied towards the “patient count” for I.R.S. purposes, regardless of whether or not the person even qualified to be a patient with them in the first place.

The only catch is that the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department must utilize its tax-payer funded Deputies and their tax-payer funded patrol cars for that first initial trip of hand delivering fresh patients into the Beast Hospital System.  It doesn’t matter if the patient qualifies as a psychiatric patient, or a drug addict, or has a behavioral or emotional problem or not.  All that matters is that law enforcement be utilized to respond to emergency 911 calls, and instead of calling for EMS paramedics in an ambulance to take people to a REAL emergency room, just promise the patient that the Deputy will take them to the hospital, and simply drop the critically ill person off at the psychiatric prison for lock-up, instead.

The victimized patient will be forced to pay the hospital corporation for their services given after the 911 call, and this means Insurance Fraud if the person has health insurance, and it means Medicaid Fraud if the person does not have health insurance.  If the person needed psychiatric treatment, the psychiatric facility addresses this issue.  If the person needed actual medical care of an emergency room and survives long enough through the lock-up procedure before they are taken by an ambulance to the other side of the county to the actual hospital, then they will eventually receive medical treatment.  The problem with this system is that it violates antitrust laws for hospitals since 911 callers are funneled into a particular hospital corporation often times very far away from their homes, it violates the Federal EMTALA law that requires for a person to receive immediate emergency care, it causes Insurance Fraud or Medicaid Fraud for medical bills that were needless, and it is a very dangerous conflict of interest between the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department and a private hospital corporation.

This dangerous conflict of interest brings into question if an officer is really there to serve and protect its citizens by helping them when they call 911, or is the officer there to be used as a pawn to scavenge for new victims to feed the Hospital Beast Corporation so as to further the agenda of the private corporation’s financial gains under the guise of upholding law and order?  How can a Sheriff’s Deputy, who is not licensed as a psychiatrist, label a person as a psychiatric patient and choose to take the citizen to a psychiatric prison instead of calling for EMS in an ambulance to take the person to an emergency room for a professional examination by a licensed physician?

Can a citizen really trust the Sheriff’s Deputies ever again after having been lied to about being taken to a hospital for emergency care, but only to find oneself locked up in a psychiatric prison instead?  I feel that the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department has betrayed my trust by putting this hospital corporation’s financial interests above my own personal life, health, and safety.  The Sheriff’s Deputy came into my home after my 911 call for help, I requested to be taken to a hospital for emergency medical treatment, the Deputy promised me that if I went with him that he would take me to a hospital, and yet I was delivered to and abandoned by the Sheriff’s Deputy at a location that is not even legally qualified as being called a hospital by Florida state law, and I could have died while locked up behind the psychiatric prison’s walls since they purposely detained me there and denied me all forms of medical care when I repeatedly requested that emergency care be provided to me.

To make matters worse, the Pasco County Sheriff probably wouldn’t even care that his Department sends innocent citizens with critical physical medical conditions to languish away in a psychiatric prison without access to an emergency room so as to produce illegal profits for this hospital corporation because at a meeting between himself, Congressman Gus Bilirakis, and leaders from the hospital corporation, Sheriff Chris Nocco made a blood-chilling statement.

From the article titled, “Panelists Identify Gaps In Mental Health System,” published on December 24, 2014, in the newspaper The Laker / Lutz News:

“Some panelists pointed out specific areas that need reform. Pasco County sheriff Chris Nocco, for example, believes changes are needed in the state’s Baker Act, which governs how long a person can be detained for a mental evaluation. The current maximum is 72 hours.

“That, Nocco said, ‘is not long enough,’ likening it to putting a bandage on a gushing wound.”

http://lakerlutznews.com/lln/?p=24160

 

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act created new requirements for nonprofit hospital corporations to meet.  In order to maintain their tax-exempt status, hospitals must prove that they are providing a benefit to the community through meeting a quota of patient contact counts.

In Morton Plant / BayCare’s own document entitled:  Morton Plant North Bay Hospital and MPNB Recovery Center:  Implementation Plan —  Report, which is Part 2 of their Community Health Needs Assessment Report, they very clearly show evidence that they must increase their quota of patient contact counts each year.  Here is an example of one such program:

Pages 37-39 show the Implementation Plan for Morton Plant’s Recovery Center’s program for Substance Abuse and Substance Addiction.  The plan is divided into three year increments.

In Year 1 it states:  “(3d &e) Document the number of patients referred to the program and the number of patients participating in the program.  (1-3).  Report progress to the IRS.”

In Year 2 it states:  “(1a-b).  Document treatment outcomes, utilization statistics, etc.  (2).  Document utilization statistics for detox beds.  (3).  Continue to document the number of patients referred to the program, number of patients participating in the program and program outcomes.  (1-3). Report progress to the IRS.”

In Year 3 it states:  “(1a-b).  Document treatment outcomes, utilization statistics, etc.  (2).  Document utilization statistics for Detox beds.  (3).  Continue to document the number of patients referred to the program, number of patients participating in the program and program outcomes.  (1-3)  Report progress to the IRS.”

https://baycare.org/~/media/baycaredotorg/pdf-files/mpnb/about-us/morton-plant-north-bay-hospital-and-recovery-center-implementation-plan.ashx

 

This document may not be available to the public for very long, so any interested people should view it as soon as possible.  Morton Plant / BayCare took down their Community Health Needs Assessment report, which was a 372-page document, after we began our investigations of their practices.  They apparently were not concerned that this action violated federal law.  This has been reported by us to the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service.  It is only reasonable to assume that the Implementation Plan will also be taken down once Morton Plant / BayCare realizes that we have begun an investigation into this document.

It is clear that the “progress” that they are referring to is the increase in the number of patients who complete the detoxification program.  In order to maintain tax-exempt status, the hospital corporation must comply by fulfilling a set quota of patients and ensuring that each additional year there will be an increase in the number of patients served.

Pages 43-45 show that the same situation exists with the hospital corporation’s program for providing care for children’s mental health services.  Once again, the Implementation Plan is divided into three years, and they are required to document the number of program participants and outcomes and to report the progress to the IRS.

However, what happens if there are not enough patients available with the need to be provided care for mental health services or for substance abuse and addiction?  What happens if the hospital corporation cannot find enough people to come in each year to fulfill their increasing quota of patient contact counts to complete these programs?  Is the hospital corporation at risk now of losing their tax-exempt status due to not being able to meet these patient quotas?  Is this the reason that the Sheriff’s Deputy delivered me to the Morton Plant Recovery Center instead of a qualified, licensed Emergency Room?  Was this merely all just an attempt to increase the patient contact count for this hospital corporation?

This is also the reason that the psychiatrist who evaluated me the following day at the hospital did not want to allow me to go home after receiving my medical treatment.  The psychiatrist had originally planned to send me back to the Recovery Center to complete the three days of confinement that the Sheriff’s Deputy illegally initiated when he delivered me to the psychiatric prison.  Each day that I was forced to be in the hands of the Morton Plant / BayCare Corporation increased the number of patient contacts, which they so greedily covet.

The psychiatrist told my husband that he planned to send me back to the Recovery Center, even though he was fully aware of the fact that I had been diagnosed and treated for a critical, life-threatening medical emergency.  I was not and had never been a psychiatric patient.  It is considered medical malpractice to subject a medical patient through the ordeal of being mistreated by forcing them to suffer through unnecessary psychiatric care.  My husband told the psychiatrist that he would bring in an independent, third-party psychiatrist to evaluate me at the psychiatric prison.  His medical report could then be presented to the Florida Board of Medicine.  This would very likely expose the fraudulent activity of illegally holding a patient at a facility that the patient should never have been taken to in the first place.

Morton Plant / BayCare’s own corporate psychiatrist abruptly changed his tune and asked my husband if he would prefer that I be released immediately to his care.  My husband was surprised by the sudden change in the psychiatrist’s professional opinion.  His plan instantly changed from keeping a patient who was supposedly a threat to herself and others to completely releasing me to my husband with no restrictions.  This clearly only occurred because of my husband’s medical training and knowledge of corresponding laws.  Most other people would not have someone like my husband to speak up for them and would be doomed to be sent back to the psychiatric prison.  The psychiatrist removed the Baker Act, and went on to officially give me a clean bill of health.  He concluded that all of my delusions had been caused by my medical condition of having critically low levels of electrolytes, and not due to any psychiatric problem.

The Implementation Plan developed by Morton Plant / BayCare, as required by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, clearly demonstrates that nonprofit hospitals will be required to increase their patient contact counts in ALL types of medical care.  This document indicates that cancer screening programs will follow strict, rigid protocols.  On pages 33-36, the Implementation Plan for providing cancer screenings is outlined.  The hospital corporation is using the same formula of the three-year plan of documenting the numbers of people being provided cancer screening exams each year and to report the progress to the IRS.

How is any of this legal?  How can it even be considered ethical within medicine to strictly mandate that a hospital corporation MUST be ruled by the concept of increasing patient numbers each year through specific programs instead of providing care that a patient actually needs?  It is obvious that people who may not actually meet the criteria of this protocol could very well be placed into a particular program that they should not be assigned.  The patient would be subjectively herded into a system merely to increase patient numbers that the hospital corporation desperately needs to fulfill its quotas. The overriding concern of maintaining tax-exempt status in an effort to save the hospital corporation many millions of dollars each year in corporate taxes comes at a very high price.  The relentless pursuit of new patients to fulfill quotas will lead to the improper diagnosis and treatment of people, whose lives could be put in jeopardy, merely to satisfy the greed of large hospital corporations.  My own experience of being dragged into the Morton Plant Recovery Center proves that people are being abused by this system!

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s mandate on nonprofit hospitals to justify numbers of patient contact counts needs to be seriously evaluated because this is a national law that affects all 50 states, and there is no telling how many hospitals have already discovered and implemented “new and creative” ways to increase their patient contact counts within their various programs that they offer.  I believe that Congressional Hearings to initiate an investigation of all of the aspects of the Affordable Care Act would be the best way to raise awareness and correct the dangerous situation which currently exists.  The incentives to meet quotas for patient contact counts within nonprofit hospital corporations and their effects on patients’ Civil Rights and the quality of care that they are receiving are threatening all of our lives everyday.

I am exposing these facts today in an effort to bring justice for myself and for all other people who have been victimized by the partnership of the Pasco County Florida Sheriff’s Department and the Morton Plant Mease Hospital / BayCare Behavioral Health System’s alliance with each other.  I bring forth the following allegations, based upon my own personal experiences that happened between September 2-4, 2014.  It is important to realize that these same dangerous actions are occurring throughout the entire country due to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

There should be an immediate investigation into the questionable business practices being performed that:

1.  A private hospital corporation is misappropriating the use of the tax-payer funded Sheriff’s Department of law enforcement officers, patrol cars, and the 911 emergency system to refer and funnel citizens into medical programs that are illegal.  Sheriff’s Deputies are delivering and abandoning critically ill patients to an environment that does not meet the legal requirements of a hospital setting:  i.e., lacks diagnostic facilities such as X-Ray machines and laboratories for performing blood tests, is absent of any physicians on site to examine and treat these medically ill patients, and therefore cannot legally accept medically unstable patients on the premises.

2.  Violate the Federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), in which a critically ill patient with a physical medical condition was denied access to an emergency room by being illegally held in a psychiatric jail-cell holding facility for several hours while never having any type of psychiatric condition, and the patient requested emergency medical care several times, thus their Civil Rights being violated;

3.  Disregard of antitrust laws involving one hospital corporation being favored over other corporations and being funneled consumers who utilize 911 emergency services, even when the patients are misdirected into the incorrect medical facilities for their illnesses, i.e., medically ill or injured patients being sent to a psychiatric jail-cell holding facility instead of to an emergency room, and they are being funneled into a hospital system located further away from their homes when three other hospital emergency rooms are closer;

4.   I.R.S. tax laws that are being violated in order to fraudulently secure tax-exempt 501 (c) (3) status of a not-for-profit hospital corporation, causing tax evasion of Federal Income Taxes,  including fabricating information of “serving a benefit to the community” in the required Community Health Needs Assessment report (CHNA), as mandated by the Internal Revenue Service and the Affordable Care Act; and

5.  Medicaid and Health Insurance Fraud of acquiring patients who are questionable in their legitimacy in meeting the requirements of their diagnosis, and therefore never needing the treatment but being forced to financially pay for this unnecessary treatment.  There was never any medical need on my part to be taken to a psychiatric facility or to be forced to pay for the psychiatrist who had to examine me after the emergency room physician ordered the Baker Act to be put upon me.  If my insurance company pays these bills, this is insurance fraud.  If Federal Medicaid dollars are spent, this is Medicaid fraud.

I have created and posted a Youtube video of myself giving an explanation of what happened to me, and it would help to provide public support in seeing my face and hearing my voice as I give a detailed account of my experiences.  I am also willing to be further interviewed by any reporters who wish to talk to me.

Youtube video of myself: