Dabrow Responds to Questions in 134th District Race

Republican Arlene Dabrow, a candidate in the Republican primary for the 134th state House seat, declined to answer posed by Patch. She submitted the following response, which is presented in full and unedited:

This election is about Corruption and the Cover-Up of it. This is particularly egregious since it is directed at elderly, vulnerable residents.  This is being done by the very agencies that are supposed to care about these seniors – The Pennsylvania Department of Agency, and the Lehigh County Area Agency on Aging which operates under the PDA.

The Civil Service Commission of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (in their job announcement) states that preference in job selection will be given to those over age sixty (60). This is a Commonwealth statute.  However, the Director of this local Agency tells his supervisory staff that he “doesn’t want some old woman working there.”  After six months of negotiation between this Director and the Chairman of the CSC, the Director of the LCAAA agrees to higher this older person to thwart the investigation planned by the CSC.

However, the Director of this LCAAA directs his staff “to get rid of her.”  Retaliatory events start day one.  The Assistant Director tells this now probationary employee to attend a conference later that week.  This Assistant Director twice gives this employee directions to a wrong College Campus.  After further investigation, this now employee discovers, that LCAAA, in fact, never made reservations for anyone to attend this conference (seventy miles away), and further that the conference had been cancelled months before and that all agencies that had made reservations for this conference had been contacted and notified of the cancellation.

Home visits are supposed to be made to these home-bound residents, and there are particular items to be covered regarding their Activities of Daily Living, (and the type and amount of assistance needed with them) Medications, Current Physician, and other issues of this kind. Instead of this, the Supervisor of this Waiver Department’s training of this new employee consists of a visit to a family who speaks very little English.  At this home visit, this Supervisor instead tells the daughter and son-in-law of this elderly resident, that she is cutting the hours of home care because “the President of the United States told her to do so.”  She goes on to tell this elderly couple that “I spoke to the President last night about this.”

If this doesn’t sound plausible, I would not have thought so either unless I witnessed it myself.  However, things get worse from here.  The most graphic event of abuse and sub-standard treatment (not the most potentially fatal) occurs when this new employee is on a pre-arranged, unpaid week of absence.  One of the clients was to have a radical mastectomy.  Based on the information given to the daughters’ of this client, the Medicare person (skilled nursing) and the Medicaid person (a person who helps with the meals and light household chores) could not be in the patient’s home at the same time.

Based on the above information, this client’s daughters give the prescription from the Oncologist to the LCAAA.  The oncologist (cancer doctor) performs the operation and sends the patient home the next day, under the assumption that Nursing care would begin at this person’s home the next day.  This Supervisor and/or the Nursing Supervisor at LCAAA were supposed to initiate these Medicare Services in my absence.

I return after a week of absence to learn three days later that neither the Waiver Supervisor nor the Nursing Supervisor have initiated these Nursing (Medicare services) (a licensing violation for the nurse because she actually had the prescription from the physician), and this client’s daughters have been frantically calling LCAAA several times a day to both the Supervisor and the Nursing Supervisor, and neither is returning their calls.

As I am about to initiate these critical services, the Waiver Supervisor threatens me with “insubordination” if I do so.  She says to me “I am your supervisor; you do what I tell you to do.” She continues:  “you are to teach these doctors the difference between Medicare and Medicaid.” (By the way, your readers might like to know that I was the Chairperson of a Citizen Group in the 1960s that helped create and advocate for the legislation of both Medicare and Medicaid along with other programs.)

The Nursing Supervisor (for whom on-purpose violating the physician’s prescription is a licensing violation) tells me “you will do what your supervisor says.”  Needless to say, the physicians’ are outraged.  This denial of service to this woman goes on for forty-one (41) days before I am given consent to get help to this woman.  Meanwhile the daughters of this person during the period between the surgery and when Medicare services actually begin are frantically calling 911 on a regular basis to rush their mother into the hospital for care for the incision.  This person needed much more service because of this unbelievable abuse, which included another surgery.

By the way, your readers might like to know, that I have both a medical, and a social work background.

After six months of this kind of retaliation against me and my case-load, the Director tells the Nursing Supervisor to “get rid of her now.”  At that point, the Waiver Supervisor begins to go into my signed notes and begins changing them and forging my signature (this is all done by computer and goes instantaneously to the PDA system).  I am made to go to meetings in a “Conference Room.”  These are conferences such as I have never attended in my life.  In this room with the two people who are charged with “get rid of her” I am accused of what the Supervisor changed my notes to reflect.  These notes are of home visits with clients at which neither the Nursing Supervisor nor Waiver Supervisor are present.  Subsequently I was terminated with these false charges being leveled at me, despite the untruthfulness of these remarks.  

A Civil Service Hearing was scheduled.  Because several employees told me that the County “has a way to reach the appellant’s (that would be me) attorney, I deliberately went out of this geographical to retain an attorney. 

This attorney too “got reached.”  The Hearing was a sham and a farce.  This lawyer was supposed to subpoena the (1) Director of this Agency who ordered his subordinates “to get rid of her,” (2) a member of the supervisory staff who told me about the Director’s orders, (3) the three doctors who ordered Medicare Services for the Mastectomy patient; (4) the Medicare Agency to testify as to when services actually began.  This attorney was also put on the stand the person who was out of town with me when this mastectomy occurred.  I have the actual e-mail acknowledgement from this attorney that the subpoenas were issued and served.  He did none of the above.

I immediately contacted the Chairman of the CSC, Dr. Kreidie.  Dr. Kreidie told me to report the Attorney to the Disciplinary Board, with the understanding that if I reached the high bar set by the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court, a new Hearing would be held (uncorrupt).  I received the Discipline letter on this attorney, and immediately Petitioned for a New Hearing.  I received no response.  After several attempts at re-petitioning, I sent my mail “Certified, Return Receipt Requested, Deliver to Addressee Only, Dr. Marwan Kreidie.”  My mail never reached the Chairman; it was intercepted by the Chief Counsel of the CSC, who instead of forwarding my mail to the Chairman responded with a distortion of the facts of the matter, and sent a letter to me overnight threatening me.  

Representative Douglas G. Reichley responded to this threat from a government agency to this Chief Counsel.  Still (other than by Doug Reichley) they (our bureaucrats [well-paid] continue to sweep this matter under the rug.  Our elected officials continue to “pass the buck” (also well-paid) and aid in the “cover-up. 

Now the whole theory of having something in the public domain rather than the private sector is so that the employees can concentrate in providing service rather than worrying about obtaining capital.  Additionally, in the public domain, these employees are supposed to receive oversight by our elected officials.