W.Va. News
W.Va. justice frustrated with state health agency
AP
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia's state health department is suffering from a "systemic" lack of resources that regularly results in a failure to meet its legal obligations, according to state Supreme Court Chief Justice Brent Benjamin.
In a concurring opinion filed last week related to a case decided in May, Benjamin expressed frustration at the Department of Health and Human Resources' inability "to comply fully with its statutory mandate."
"I am deeply troubled and concerned about this continuing resource problem," Benjamin wrote, "a problem which I sense may be worsening and may be becoming systemic. This underlying resource problem perhaps deserves the court's fuller attention."
Benjamin didn't specify what he means by that concluding observation, and Supreme Court spokesman Jennifer Bundy said the opinion speaks for itself.
"Chief Justice Benjamin's comments in this opinion simply show that the issues he mentions are on the radar screen of one justice, in this case the chief justice," she said.
Benjamin's opinion was written in response to a case in which the DHHR successfully sought a Supreme Court ruling that blocked a lower court from dismissing the agency's move to terminate a woman's parental rights.
Cabell County Circuit Judge David Pancake was frustrated that the DHHR repeatedly failed to meet court-ordered deadlines in the case, and had warned he would dismiss the agency's request if it didn't improve its record.
Although the Supreme Court unanimously overturned Pancake's ruling in May, Benjamin's recent opinion expresses sympathy for Pancake's frustration, writing, "It is a frustration which I fear is too frequently felt by our courts in matters related to DHHR."
Benjamin wrote that DHHR's legal counsel in the case acknowledged that "resources necessary for DHHR to comply fully with its statutory mandate too frequently are lacking," although not because of any deliberate agency policy.
The agency does face resource problems, especially in terms of competition for employees with the private sector, according to DHHR spokesman John Law, which leads to large workloads for agency staffers.
Law cited Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Hospital in Huntington, which has been the subject of another action in a circuit court, as a prime example. There are three private psychiatric hospitals in the area, Law said, making competition for staff members particularly hard, given that public employees make substantially less than their counterparts in the private sector.
"It's sort of a perfect storm there," he said. "There's tremendous competition for employees in that field."
Last month, Kanawha County Circuit Judge Duke Bloom revived an independent court monitor position to track how the state provides care at Bateman and West Virginia's other public psychiatric hospital, William R. Sharpe Hospital in Weston.
Bloom's reopening of a decades-old case involving the psychiatric hospitals was prompted by reports of persistent overcrowding. The DHHR sought to block Bloom from intervening, but the Supreme Court upheld his right to do so.
In a concurring opinion filed last week related to a case decided in May, Benjamin expressed frustration at the Department of Health and Human Resources' inability "to comply fully with its statutory mandate."
"I am deeply troubled and concerned about this continuing resource problem," Benjamin wrote, "a problem which I sense may be worsening and may be becoming systemic. This underlying resource problem perhaps deserves the court's fuller attention."
Benjamin didn't specify what he means by that concluding observation, and Supreme Court spokesman Jennifer Bundy said the opinion speaks for itself.
"Chief Justice Benjamin's comments in this opinion simply show that the issues he mentions are on the radar screen of one justice, in this case the chief justice," she said.
Benjamin's opinion was written in response to a case in which the DHHR successfully sought a Supreme Court ruling that blocked a lower court from dismissing the agency's move to terminate a woman's parental rights.
Cabell County Circuit Judge David Pancake was frustrated that the DHHR repeatedly failed to meet court-ordered deadlines in the case, and had warned he would dismiss the agency's request if it didn't improve its record.
Although the Supreme Court unanimously overturned Pancake's ruling in May, Benjamin's recent opinion expresses sympathy for Pancake's frustration, writing, "It is a frustration which I fear is too frequently felt by our courts in matters related to DHHR."
Benjamin wrote that DHHR's legal counsel in the case acknowledged that "resources necessary for DHHR to comply fully with its statutory mandate too frequently are lacking," although not because of any deliberate agency policy.
The agency does face resource problems, especially in terms of competition for employees with the private sector, according to DHHR spokesman John Law, which leads to large workloads for agency staffers.
Law cited Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Hospital in Huntington, which has been the subject of another action in a circuit court, as a prime example. There are three private psychiatric hospitals in the area, Law said, making competition for staff members particularly hard, given that public employees make substantially less than their counterparts in the private sector.
"It's sort of a perfect storm there," he said. "There's tremendous competition for employees in that field."
Last month, Kanawha County Circuit Judge Duke Bloom revived an independent court monitor position to track how the state provides care at Bateman and West Virginia's other public psychiatric hospital, William R. Sharpe Hospital in Weston.
Bloom's reopening of a decades-old case involving the psychiatric hospitals was prompted by reports of persistent overcrowding. The DHHR sought to block Bloom from intervening, but the Supreme Court upheld his right to do so.
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