Category Archives: mark kissinger

Feeney Again: Understatements & Reasons

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An understatement: New York State brain injury survivors and their families will be up arms if Timothy J. Feeney and his staff have any involvement in the Statewide Neurobehavioral Project; a project designed to help providers of services under the Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver. In fact, if there were an Olympic event for understatements and you uttered the preceding sentence, you might just win gold.

I was asked recently if I knew if a contract had been signed that would bring Feeney back.  While I’ve heard from an array of sources that Feeney and his minions are scampering around claiming they are under contract, I do not think the contract has been signed. If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll recall that for 15 years while working under contract with the department of health, Feeney misrepresented his educational credentials to New York State Officials, people with brain injuries of all ages, children with disabilities, educational institutions, and healthcare providers. It may be that he did so in courts as well. An avenue of investigative interest for sure. 

If you think having the bogusness of his credentials exposed in 2008 by this writer dissuaded him from continuing the ruse, you’re wrong. Feeney continued and continues to present himself as having a PhD and a Masters Degree. The truth?  He has neither. Feeney was issued these “degrees” by a business called Greenwich University; a dip0loma mill. “Degrees” from Greenwich are not valid anywhere in the world.

Let me just say that I’ve known people with real doctorates and real masters degrees and my father taught at Columbia University and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. People pour their blood, sweat and tears into getting these degrees.

If I am right that the contract has not been signed, I believe there are several reasons for this. Most will not surprise you – one might.

  • First, and likely the least surprising, the whole country is looking to conserve Medicaid dollars to the extreme (keep in mind Feeney was essentially being paid with your tax dollars).
  • Second, everyone knows that allowing Feeney and those linked to Feeney back into the fold would be a clear statement to survivors of brain injuries, their loved ones that they are second rate citizens. Why else anyone allow someone who misrepresents his credentials and those who know this and support him back into the fold? It would be like asking a geologist to oversee neurosurgery across the state (my apologies to the geologists among us).
  • Third, if Feeney were again part of the neurobehavioral project and investigations resulted in criminal and or civil charges against him down the road, how would anyone look if they’d entered into a contract with him, directly or indirectly, having been fully informed of his misrepresentations before doing so?! Wouldn’t any parties falling into this category find themselves on the receiving end of some fairly zealous and plausible litigation?
  • However, there is a fourth reason, and this is the one that might surprise you. While the public at large is quick to condemn government agencies simply because they are government agencies, such condemnations are not always accurate. All indications are that those in the New York State Department of Health genuinely do care about the quality of services being provided to survivors of brain injury in the state. And that is good news for us all.

 

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Kahrmann Coalition Meets with NY DOH Officials

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In a wide ranging conversation marked by mutual respect and openness, representatives of the Kahrmann Consumer Advocacy Coalition met with Mark Kissinger, deputy commissioner for the New York State Department of Health, and members of his staff.

As founder of the KCAC, and one who will never blink when it comes to my support for the equal rights of all people, in this case, people with brain injuries and their families, today’s meeting very much appeared to be the beginning of what I suspect both sides hope will be an ongoing healthy dialogue.

The DOH said a newspaper article reporting that a hold had been put on the transfer of brain injury survivors consumers to licensed home care agencies was mistaken. While Kissinger and his staff  could not guarantee no consumers would wind up in nursing homes as a result of the transfer of services,  they assured us they were working on a daily basis with providers, focusing on each individual consumer, to make sure consumers are not going without the home and community support services they deserve. Moreover, the DOH said it is strongly discouraging nursing home admissions.

As for the timing of the late-December 2009 directive to providers requiring they transfer home community staff services to licensed home health care agencies in 30 days, Kissinger and his staff said waiver providers were told in 2006 that all agencies providing home and community services were required to be licensed home care agencies and, in 2007, were notified  of this requirement in writing. According the DOH, providers were directed to be in compliance by the end of September, 2009,  had that deadline extended to the end of December 2009, and then had that deadline extended another month.

A number of other possibilities were discussed, including, but not limited to:

  • Quarterly meetings between the KCAC and the DOH.
  • Quarterly meetings between the KCAC, the DOH and an alliance traumatic brain injury waiver health care providers.
  • Increase reimbursement rates for providers
  • The establishment of reimbursement for staff training relevant to the population being served.
  • Including KCAC members as unpaid participants on  DOH survey teams.
  • KCAC meeting consumers across the state in day programs offered by waiver providers.

As a civil rights advocate on all fronts: women, gay and lesbian, people with disabilities, blacks, Latinos, Jews, Muslims, and so on, and as one who lives with a brain injury, I, like many others, know only too well  what it is to be condescended to, or patronized. We were in no way treated like this by Mark Kissinger and his staff.  We were not condescended to or patronized, we were not rushed to end the meeting, and while all the answers were not every inch of what we hoped for, no question we asked was ducked or avoided. We were treated as equals. And that, no matter how you slice it, is good news.

Today was a good beginning for the relationship between the KCAC and the Department of Health. Next, we will be seeking to meet with the Providers Alliance and, of course, we look forward to a follow-up meeting with Mr. Kissinger and his staff.

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Equal Rights Are Not a Budget Item

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Bigotry never trumps freedom and freedom is not possible without equal rights.

And so it is that people with disabilities are being told having equal rights depends on the economy, thus relegating them to a budget item.

ADAPT, the country’s most prestigious disability rights organization in this writer’s view, has  launched a Defending Our Freedom campaign to address the carnage being inflicted on the lives of people with disabilities. Across this country state budget cuts are forcing people with disabilities, as well as seniors, back into nursing homes, all this in direct violation of the 11-year-old  United States Supreme Court Olmstead Decision which says Americans with disabilities have the right to live in the most integrated settings.

The Kahrmann Consumer Advocacy Coalition (KCAC)  completely supports the ADAPT campaign.  The KCAC will be seeking to address one of the symptoms of this attack on the rights of people with disabilities when members of its leadership team meet Friday with Mark Kissinger, a deputy commissioner in the New York State Department of Health, and his staff. The state’s DOH has recently issued a directive to providers of services to people with brain injuries living in the community that, if it stands as is, will likely send back into nursing homes and put others at risk.

The survivors themselves have sued the state to stop the carnage.

It is appropriate that this piece is being written on the birthday of Rosa Parks, an extraordinary woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery Alabama and, with that single act of defiance, sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott which led to the end of segregation on the buses and brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence.

Treating any minority, whether it be people with disabilities, people who are Gay or Lesbian, people who are black, Hispanic, Jewish,  Muslim, and so on as if they are less than human, is not only illegal, it is a foolish strategy. Why? Because the bigotry that blinds people to the humanity of others  leads them to underestimate the will and resourcefulness of the very people they are dehumanizing.

We are born with equal rights. They are not something we need to earn or be given as a line item in a budget.

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Kahrmann Coalition to Meet with NY DOH

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Members of the Kahrmann Consumer Advocacy Coalition are expected to meet with Deputy Commissioner Mark Kissinger and other New York Department of Health officials in early February in part to discuss concerns about a recent DOH directive to transfer injury brain injury survivors living in the community to agencies that may not be prepared take them and, in doing so, destroy relationships with agencies that have been providing effective care, in some cases, for years.

“We’re concerned that freedom of choice is being denied, that survivors may find themselves in places not equipped to support them and others may find themselves placed in nursing homes,” said coalition founder, Peter S. Kahrmann. 

Kahrmann, who lives with a brain injury as a result of being held up and shot in the head at point blank range in 1984, hopes the meeting will prove beneficial to all. “If they are talking with consumers and if this directive is being supported by consumers, that’s a healthy thing.  That’s not we’re hearing. Something simply being inflicted on consumers, not so healthy.”

Kissinger says agencies providing community support staff to 63 survivors of brain injuries will have to discharge their survivors to other agencies because they are not Licensed Home Care Agencies. Some of the agencies being asked to transfer people have been providing quality care for years with the Department of Health’s blessing.

Kahrmann said the Coalition has heard  the number of consumers being transferred exceeds the 63 reported  by DOH officials. “Right now the number we’re hearing is in the neighborhood of 150 people,” Kahrmann said.

The KCAC is a coalition of brain injury survivors, family members and other interested parties. “It is an extraordinary thing to see the coalition grow,” said Kahrmann.

Kahrmann said all coalition members are urged to become members of the Brain Injury Association of New York State. “They are the centerpiece for advocacy in the state,” he said.

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Note: People interested in joining the KCAC can write to Mr. Kahrmann at peterkahrmann@gmail.com or write to, Kahrmann, P.O. Box 19, Westerlo, NY 12193

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Notes From an Advocate

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The last thing you encounter as an advocate is a shortage of dishonesty. It comes at you from every direction.

As readers of this blog know, the New York Department of Health has directed anywhere from eight to 18 agencies across the state to transfer brain injury survivors living in the community from their care even though many of the providers have adhered to all DOH requests, even though the lives of the survivors will be brutally disrupted and traumatized, and even though some survivors will likely find themselves back in nursing homes because there are no agencies in their area to pick up the slack, and even though the DOH has not talked to the survivors about this.

DOH Deputy Commissioner Mark Kissinger and his staff held  a telephone conference yesterday with the leadership of the TBISCC (Traumatic Brain Injury Service Coordinating Council). The TBISCC is headed by Michael Kaplen (former president of the Brain Injury Association of NY State and a man who has fought hard for the rights of brain injury survivors for years) and comprised of a group of people whose hearts and souls are committed to fact that all people living with brain injuries deserve a chance to reach their maximum level of independence. While I was not present at the meeting, I can tell you from firsthand experience that Kaplen and Council members advocate for survivors with all their might. So does the Brain Injury Association of NY State.

During this meeting Kissinger told the council that something along the lines of 63 brain injury survivors would have their lives disrupted by the DOH directive. He is misinformed or lying. Sources tell me more than 100 survivors in the New York City area alone will be effected by this and there is non-NYC provider faced with having to discharge 50 survivors. In other words, the number of brain injury survivors who will have their freedom of choice, meaning their independence ,meaning their rights as American citizens denied, is probably in the hundreds, if not more.

Yesterday morning I called Kissinger’s office and spoke to a person named Sheri. I told her that as head of the Kahrmann Advocacy Coalition I wanted to schedule a meeting with Kissinger and do so before we say, organize a sit-in in the lobby and bring the media. She said she would get back to me and she did, by email, later in the day, saying they were working on putting together the “phone conference” I requested with Kissinger. I wrote back reminding her – as if she needed reminding – that I did not ask for a phone conference, I asked for an in-person meeting.

As to why this is all happening? Here’s a thought. The DOH directive (see recent blog pieces for more complete explanation) will likely send quite a few people back into nursing homes. Given that some areas of the state will be left without agencies to provide community support staff, other survivors won’t be able to be discharged from nursing homes. Take these observations and connect them to this one; NY’s Nursing Home Transition Waiver is designed to allow people to leave nursing homes and return to life in the community. Is is possible this directive will short circuit that? If so, would it not be reasonable to ask if maybe the Nursing Home Lobby is behind all this?

Anyway, more notes to come. Keep the faith.

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