Texas Vet Board Watch Founder Greg Munson's submitted comments and position Re: RQ-0726-GA
Letter
1
August 3, 2008
Ms. Nancy S. Fuller
Chair, Opinion Committee
Office of the Attorney General
P.O. Box 12548
Austin, Texas 78711-2548
Re: RQ-0726-GA
Dear Ms. Fuller,
Thank you very much for your letter, dated July 28, 2008, concerning the request your office received for an attorney general opinion from Mr. Dewey E. Helmcamp III, J.D., Executive Director of the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners (the Board). As mentioned in your letter, Mr. Helmcamp's request was dated July 11, 2008, and your office designated it as Request No. 0726-GA. This matter is of great interest to me and I certainly appreciate the opportunity to be able to provide your office with my comments. This matter is also of extreme importance to the citizens of Texas as it directly relates to the Board's unfair and biased complaint process.
Background:
I, along with my wife, Cindy, filed a complaint with the Board, in January 2006, alleging veterinary malpractice in the death of our beloved 8 year old AKC champion-sired male Shih Tzu, Stempy, at the hands of a Mesquite veterinarian, who is a licensee of the Board. The Board subsequently dismissed our complaint. (All details of our complaint can be found online at Stempy's website: www.stempy.net ). We are in strong disagreement with the Board's decision and I am convinced that the dismissal is a direct result of the Board's extremely biased and unfair complaint process. For a quick overview of just how unfair and biased the Board's complaint process is, all in favor of the licensee, please see the chart I have created below:
Current Complaint Process:
Once the Board receives a complaint, determines jurisdiction, assigns an investigator, and sends a letter to the complainant acknowledging receipt, it then sends a request for the related medical records to the Board's licensee.
Upon receipt of the medical records, the Board then provides a copy of the complete written complaint, as submitted by the complainant, to the licensee and solicits a written response from the licensee. At present, the complainant is not allowed to see, or respond to, the licensee's written response.
This is the first point in the process that is unfair and biased in favor of the licensee, and this is the point I am addressing with my comments. The ONLY person/s in the world, unless their happens to be other witnesses, with the actual knowledge to dispute any inaccuracies in the licensee's response IS the complainant. Yet, at this CRITICAL point in the investigative process, the complainant is effectively rendered deaf and blind. The licensee has the benefit of being able to craft and tailor their response directly to all details as submitted by the complainant, all the while knowing that the complainant will never see, or be able to dispute, their version of events. The licensee can effectively rewrite history if they so choose. THIS is absurd.
Issues and Goals:
As our complaint has long since been dismissed, there is nothing that can be done at this point, short of an expensive lawsuit, to reverse that gross injustice. However, it is our goal to bring about changes in how the Board handles complaints. One of those changes is how the Board handles the written complaint submitted to them by the complainant. It is not our goal to prevent the Board from providing a copy of the complaint to the licensee and soliciting their response to same. However, it should be noted that in some states, all that is required for an agency handling a complaint to determine if a probable violation exists, is a proper evaluation of the medical records. After all, all aspects of a patient's care should be recorded in their medical records. This is not an absurd expectation, as stated by Mr. Helmcamp.
My contention is that since the Board provides a copy of the written complaint to the licensee and then solicits their written response, the Board should then also provide a copy, to the complainant, of the licensee's response to the complaint and allow the complainant to also submit a written response. The licensee is currently allowed to both see and respond to what has been submitted by the complainant. So to, then, should the complainant be afforded the same opportunity as the licensee. To think that the Board could otherwise conduct a fair and unbiased investigation is outrageous and inherently flawed.
The Board's contention has always been that the licensee's response is part of the investigative file, which is confidential, and therefore cannot be disclosed to the complainant.
My response to the Board's contention is as follows. If the licensee's response is confidential and not allowed by law to be disclosed to the complainant, then why is the written complaint, as submitted by the complainant, - which is ALSO part of the investigative file AND confidential – provided to the licensee? Isn't that a violation of law of that very same confidentiality statute often cited by the Board? At the very least, it is an unfair and biased double standard.
I suspect that my response is partly responsible for Mr. Helmcamp's request of an attorney general opinion regarding this matter. My goal is not to prohibit the Board from conducting a thorough investigation, but rather, it is to prohibit the Board from conducting an unfair and biased investigation. If, under current law, the Board is allowed to provide to the licensee the complainant's written complaint; so to, then, should the Board be required to provide to the complainant the licensee's written response to the complaint and the complainant allowed to respond to same. Fair is fair.
It should be noted that the Board regularly dismisses more than 90% of consumer complaints alleging malpractice. Very, very, very few of these complaints ever reach the point of an informal conference, where a complainant could actually converse with a veterinarian reviewer. Our complaint never reached this point. Even fewer still of these complaints ever reach the point of an administrative hearing – where the Board then claims openness to all of the investigative records. How very convenient for the Board and all of its licensees.
Biased. Unfair. Period.
The animals and citizens of this great state deserve better. We shall continue on – in Stempy's name – in our fight to bring about change to this corrupt complaint process.
Conclusion:
I am aware that the role of the Office of the Attorney General is to interpret the law, rather than to make the law, and that some changes may need to be accomplished through legislative action. However, I do hope that your office will rule appropriately on the fallacy of the Board's current interpretation of the law.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Greg Munson
Founder, Texas Vet Board Watch
Letter
2
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August 22, 2008
Attorney General Greg Abbott,
Ms. Nancy S. Fuller
Chair, Opinion Committee
Office of the Attorney General
P.O. Box 12548
Austin, Texas 78711-2548
Re: RQ-0726-GA
Dear General Abbott, Ms. Fuller, and Opinion Committee,
Thank you for the opportunity to provide additional information in regards to Request No. 0726-GA. I trust the Opinion Committee has already received my previously submitted comments.
First, I would like to clarify an extremely important point. It is my belief that Mr. Dewey Helmcamp has not properly represented in his request for your Opinion exactly who was seeking access to the complaint. The three interested parties that you have solicited comments from are former complainants, including myself. The request for access is NOT being made by the general public.
My wife, Cindy, and I were complainants. As stated in our previously submitted comments, it is our belief that if the licensee is allowed to see and respond to all information submitted by the complainant, the complainant should be allowed to see and respond to the licensee's response. We were seeking access as the complainants only in the case we had filed. Again, the general public was not seeking access. The complainant is most certainly NOT the general public.
Perhaps Mr. Helmcamp is confused a bit because since the time our complaint was dismissed, I have also become an active citizen advocate. In that capacity, I have made several requests for public information from the Board. Some requests are nonspecific to our complaint and could be considered as a general public request. These requests are entirely separate from any requests made as the complainant.
It would also appear that an incorrect picture has been painted of the complaint process. Let me be very clear. To be sure, an overwhelming number of complaints are dismissed without the complainant ever having the opportunity to see or respond to the tailored reply submitted by the licensee – who themselves had the FULL benefit of being able to craft their reply to everything submitted by the complainant. As mentioned in my previously submitted comments, this is extremely unfair and outrageous.
VERY, very few complaints ever reach an informal conference, where the complainant MIGHT get to see a radiograph that they had already paid for. The complainant is still not given the opportunity to see or respond to the licensee's response even at the conference level.
To illustrate just how out of balance the Board's complaint process is, I made a request for public information from the Board that I received today, August 22, 2008. Numbers do not lie and I believe this chart that I put together speaks for itself:
Attorney General Greg Abbott,
Ms. Nancy S. Fuller
Chair, Opinion Committee
Office of the Attorney General
P.O. Box 12548
Austin, Texas 78711-2548
Re: RQ-0726-GA
Dear General Abbott, Ms. Fuller, and Opinion Committee,
Thank you for the opportunity to provide additional information in regards to Request No. 0726-GA. I trust the Opinion Committee has already received my previously submitted comments.
First, I would like to clarify an extremely important point. It is my belief that Mr. Dewey Helmcamp has not properly represented in his request for your Opinion exactly who was seeking access to the complaint. The three interested parties that you have solicited comments from are former complainants, including myself. The request for access is NOT being made by the general public.
My wife, Cindy, and I were complainants. As stated in our previously submitted comments, it is our belief that if the licensee is allowed to see and respond to all information submitted by the complainant, the complainant should be allowed to see and respond to the licensee's response. We were seeking access as the complainants only in the case we had filed. Again, the general public was not seeking access. The complainant is most certainly NOT the general public.
Perhaps Mr. Helmcamp is confused a bit because since the time our complaint was dismissed, I have also become an active citizen advocate. In that capacity, I have made several requests for public information from the Board. Some requests are nonspecific to our complaint and could be considered as a general public request. These requests are entirely separate from any requests made as the complainant.
It would also appear that an incorrect picture has been painted of the complaint process. Let me be very clear. To be sure, an overwhelming number of complaints are dismissed without the complainant ever having the opportunity to see or respond to the tailored reply submitted by the licensee – who themselves had the FULL benefit of being able to craft their reply to everything submitted by the complainant. As mentioned in my previously submitted comments, this is extremely unfair and outrageous.
VERY, very few complaints ever reach an informal conference, where the complainant MIGHT get to see a radiograph that they had already paid for. The complainant is still not given the opportunity to see or respond to the licensee's response even at the conference level.
To illustrate just how out of balance the Board's complaint process is, I made a request for public information from the Board that I received today, August 22, 2008. Numbers do not lie and I believe this chart that I put together speaks for itself:
As Mr. Helmcamp himself
notes, the
complainant is only allowed full access (or more correctly stated...ANY
access) to the investigative file once a complaint reaches the level of
administrative hearing. In the last two years, as clearly illustrated
above, that percentage is currently 0.00%. Wow.
I am moved to disclose to you, General Abbott, further outrageous, unethical, and, I believe, unlawful conduct by a state employee / board investigator involved in our complaint.. Board rules in effect at the time of our complaint stated that the investigator shall interview the complainant (emphasis added). The investigator assigned to our complaint never interviewed us. The investigator claims to have called and interviewed my wife. We could understand the investigator being mistaken, but this investigator went so far as to even fabricate a conversation, which elevates his actions from mistaken to intentional. The day in question, my wife was not at home. She was at work and we have the timecard to prove that fact. We also obtained our phone records from our phone company which indisputably proved that no phone call or interview took place. At that point in time, my wife had never spoken to ANYONE associated with the Board. Period. The Board has refused to take action. If I am not mistaken, I believe it is against the law to falsify a government document. We presented all information to the Travis County District Attorney, who chose not to pursue the case for reasons unknown.
Attached you will find email correspondence between myself and certain Board employees that took place between the time of the original dismissal of our complaint and the subsequent dismissal of the appeal. I believe this email correspondence gives keen insight into the atmosphere and obstacles facing complainants. It also details our information request as the complainant, which the Board never asked for an open records ruling on, and contains the Board's statement of when the investigator claims to have interviewed my wife. Please be sure to read through that information as well.
Again, I am appreciative of the opportunity to be able to provide my comments, which includes our up close and personal experience with the process. If there are any clarifications needed or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Greg Munson
Founder, Texas Vet Board Watch
I am moved to disclose to you, General Abbott, further outrageous, unethical, and, I believe, unlawful conduct by a state employee / board investigator involved in our complaint.. Board rules in effect at the time of our complaint stated that the investigator shall interview the complainant (emphasis added). The investigator assigned to our complaint never interviewed us. The investigator claims to have called and interviewed my wife. We could understand the investigator being mistaken, but this investigator went so far as to even fabricate a conversation, which elevates his actions from mistaken to intentional. The day in question, my wife was not at home. She was at work and we have the timecard to prove that fact. We also obtained our phone records from our phone company which indisputably proved that no phone call or interview took place. At that point in time, my wife had never spoken to ANYONE associated with the Board. Period. The Board has refused to take action. If I am not mistaken, I believe it is against the law to falsify a government document. We presented all information to the Travis County District Attorney, who chose not to pursue the case for reasons unknown.
Attached you will find email correspondence between myself and certain Board employees that took place between the time of the original dismissal of our complaint and the subsequent dismissal of the appeal. I believe this email correspondence gives keen insight into the atmosphere and obstacles facing complainants. It also details our information request as the complainant, which the Board never asked for an open records ruling on, and contains the Board's statement of when the investigator claims to have interviewed my wife. Please be sure to read through that information as well.
Again, I am appreciative of the opportunity to be able to provide my comments, which includes our up close and personal experience with the process. If there are any clarifications needed or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Greg Munson
Founder, Texas Vet Board Watch
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