Virginia gets serious about human rights with 1983 legislation

By J. TODD FOSTER
Published: April 16, 2006

Laws long have protected Virginia’s mental-health patients from abuse and neglect. But in 1983, measures were passed to protect their human rights.

Local Human Rights Committees were set up statewide.

About 450 volunteers serve on 65 different committees and provide oversight of facilities that treat the mentally ill, mentally retarded and substance abusers.

Acute-care hospital psychiatric units, such as Augusta Medical Center’s Crossroads, were not added to the human-rights panels’ umbrella until 2001, when legislators streamlined overlapping regulations.

These local committees are “supposed to be the voice of the community, particularly the consumer community,” says Margaret Walsh, director of the state Office of Human Rights. “The volunteers on the committees are the heart and soul of the human-rights system.”
 
Each committee has five to 11 members. State law requires at least two of them to be consumers—people who have used mental-health or related services in the past five years.

The committees are not as independent as they once were, however.

The Virginia Hospital Association last year pushed through legislation to require each committee to have one health-care provider as a member.

These local committees receive patient complaints and adjudicate them. Either the patient or the provider can appeal the local committee’s ruling by going to the Virginia Human Rights Committee, which has the final say.

Most providers just change their policies in response to adverse committee rulings, Walsh says. In fact, only about 14 rulings were appealed in 2004, she notes, out of about 1,314 human-rights complaints.

The local committees meet at least quarterly to evaluate patient care at their agencies, called “affiliates.”

The Local Human Rights Committee that serves Waynesboro, Augusta County and Staunton has 13 affiliates, including Crossroads.

Mental-health patients also can file grievances with an independent agency, the Virginia Office of Protection and Advocacy. Attorneys for that agency are federally funded and have the right to sue providers on behalf of the state over any number of issues.

“I remember the days when consumers had no rights,” says Lyn Hall, of Staunton, who served on the local committee for three years. “The rights that we have as consumers were hard fought and hard won. I remember when a doctor could put you into seclusion, take your clothing, take away your dignity and not treat you with respect. These laws right here changed all that.”