Court filing urges improvement

by Nick Delgado

Guam - It's a lawsuit filed more than a decade ago, started with four plaintiffs, grown to about 200, affects and estimated target population of 1,700 people, and now is on its third governor. Attorney Daniel Somerfleck represents the plaintiffs who have been suing the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse and the Department of Integrated Services for Individuals with Disabilities for failing to adequately address their needs, including giving them an opportunity for community based placement.

He said, "What I would say is - where? Where are the improvements?"

After more than a decade of discussion and a federal management team in place for two years now, even Governor Eddie Calvo has changed his position from his first filing earlier this year to have the directors of DISID and Mental Health take over as the FMT to most recently nominating retired judge Elizabeth Barrett Anderson to take the reigns.

Somerfleck added, "I think and I would guess at the point where the governor is saying, 'I want to continue to have a court-appointed manager instead of my department', that there's that statement we need to get this fix we need to get it fixed now this is lingering too long."

Somerfleck, in his latest filing in court, wrote, "At the waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the FMT has been hallmarked by incessant in-fighting, alienation of medical health professionals and rudderless leadership, which has ignored the mandates of the amended permanent injunction with the same nonchalance as have the defendants' for the past eight years. Guam's failure to meet minimum health care standards after 12 years of litigation, and eight years after the issuance of the permanent injunction, is an absurdity of stunning proportions, especially considering we have the smallest mental health system under the American flag."

Somerfleck did however point to one glimmer of hope that was a sign the FMT may have actually been doing something, but even that has faded. Attorney Somerfleck questioning the rationale behind why the FMT is no longer gong to be using the services of Guma Bethesda, the one and only small component of the Guam Mental Health Care Delivery System, which has Joint Commission accreditation. According to the lone FMT member Dr. James Kiffer, the reason is because they were unable to agree to terms of a new contract with Guma Bethesda and as a consequence the Attorney General's Office determined the FMT should cancel negotiations and the RFP, and relocate the seven clients to Mental Health's residential homes.

"What does common sense dictate you do, then put out a new RFP?" said Somerfleck.

He also alleges that a little over half of the workers at Mental Health with direct contact with his clients have professional crisis management training. "If only 50 percent have been trained, then the other 50 percent have not been and this is where that question of how are we provide services," he said.

Dr. Kiffer noted, "I think we do plenty of training and I just don't know where such a thing would come from. Perhaps they don't know what we do here people need to ask before they start making comments I think."

Dr. Kiffer meanwhile says there have been improvements, and hopes Judge Consuelo Marshal will take note during next week's hearing. "I'm looking very closely at the amended permanent injunction taking it a part sentence looking at what we've done and what meets the requirements in the amended permanent injunction so she has something in mind what she will say when a task is completed so she wants to see some procedures in place and wants to see them working with accountability and hopefully she'll start calling some of these tasks completed soon."

"She needs to reaffirm that I am going to be in place and these motions to replace me are going to hopefully denied or if she acts on those and if she replaces me well that's her prerogative," he added.