I regret communicating this to you more than two years after the events described. I suspect that in the intervening time many others have been harmed as I was, some fatally. My health was so severely compromised by the experience that only recently have I been able to compile a reasonably complete narrative.

The attachments contain information which has already been submitted to the state medical board with my complaint about the doctor responsible. However, I believe the doctor is only part of a larger problem and the attention of law enforcement may be warranted.

On 15 January 2020 I was admitted to the Arkansas Continued Care Hospital (ACCH) in Jonesboro. I had previously been in St. Bernards for a bypass operation and was found to have a kidney injury caused by a procedure by the Arkansas Methodist Medical Center (AMMC) in Paragould before being sent to St. Bernards for surgery.

St. Bernards sent me to ACCH for treatment of the kidney injury. This is a relatively straightforward matter consisting of dialysis treatments until the kidneys recover.

I believe that both St. Bernards and AMMC made errors in their treatment but none that could be considered anything other than possible negligence. What happened to me at ACCH was an order of magnitude beyond that.

St. Bernards had suggested an possible anoxic encephalopathy due to complications after the surgery (this proved not to be the case) and I was sedated due to pain when I was transferred to ACCH. Details of the maltreatment to which I was subjected are in the attachments - my concern is for others who have been harmed by the actions of this hospital. It is a disgrace to the health care industry which hardly needs any more damage to its reputation.

While I do not doubt that Dr. Copeland is incompetent and should have his license revoked and have advised the state medical board of this he is only a symptom of the disease. ACCH should be shut down and its operators held accountable. At the very least least a thorough investigation should be conducted and corrective action taken. Given that ACCH harvested somewhere around a million dollars - probably more - from my insurance company by confining a patient for more than two months for no medical reason (I had recovered from the kidney injury long before I was released) and causing that person permanent disability what other reason would they have? Over a hundred thousand dollars a week?

Dr. Copeland's actions suggest that he was complicit in milking my insurance company and would have kept me there as long as he could get away with it. My family members finally told him they were taking me home (over strenuous objections and warnings of dire consequences) and it was not until I was out of the hospital that I began to recover. Had I remained there I would eventually have died or deteriorated past the point of being able to recover even as much as I have.

My suspicion has been reinforced by what I have learned about the hospital. CEO James Cox and the company that hired him, Community Hospital Corporation (CHC) of Plano, Texas was formerly the COO of Ascent Children's Health Services (ACHS) in Jonesboro. If that doesn't ring a bell it may be because ACHS has been out of business since 2018.

ACHS provided day care for disadvantaged children, most of them paid for by Medicaid. It was also part owner of a company that transported the children. In 2017 - after a number of incidents in which children in its care were found to have been endangered by negligence by the staff - a five year old child died after being left in a van on a hot day for eight hours. The description of the suffering of that child in the police report is horrifying. Additionally ACHS was being investigated for irregularities in Medicaid billing around that time.

This is just my opinion but if at that time the management of ACHS had been held accountable James Cox would not be the CEO of ACCH. He would be in prison.

Be that as it may he was hired by CHC to run ACCH and that operation is a travesty. CHC manages a number of other hospitals, and when I began my investigation about a year ago they had eight hospitals under direct management. Since that time one has succumbed to insolvency and was acquired by another hospital. Another one (in Cortez Colorado) is in such a condition that it was recently the subject of an article in The Nation magazine describing the abysmal conditions. I have been contacted by a member of Cortez city government about the matter and they were at that time preparing to sever their relationship with CHC.

As I said before I believe money is the only motivation for these people and have little doubt they are engaging in fraud. I know for a fact that they entered false information into my records and suspect that if the itemized bills to Blue Cross are examined they will prove a certain amount of fraud. If they will defraud insurance companies do you doubt will they hesitate to defraud Medicare and Medicaid?

ACCH (in fact all the CHC-managed hospitals) put spam reviews in Google. They disabled reviews on their Facebook page long ago because they were so bad. That may seem a trivial thing and many businesses do it but it is dishonest and reflects the character of those who do it.

As for duplicity, as regards James Cox, I archived some of the resumes he had posted online and noticed that he has changed his employment at ACHS to different company names and in some cases removed it entirely. He worked there for nine years and was the COO when it closed, but is does not want to be connected with it? His LinkedIn account also had this information but now seems to have been removed or is locked.

In the past year I have been contacted by a number of people who had similar experiences. At least one was worse - one of them had a 23 year old son who died. Looking at the ages of people who die there it looks bad. I realize that people in hospitals are sick (well, I wasn't that sick) and may die but the ages of many make me suspicious, knowing what I know about the place.



In any case there is at least one provable - at least to litigation standards of proof - death and one is too many. I am alive only because my family removed me while I was still - barely - alive. This is a hospital that had at the time been in operation for about four years. I believe that all deaths at that hospital should be examined.

Finally, in my notes I commented on the deplorable conditions of the hospital and its staff. I recently noticed that a lawsuit involving ACCH (SHARON JACKSON v ARKANSAS CONTINUED CARE HOSPITAL) compensation is in progress. Given Mr. Cox's apparent preference for low-cost employees it is not surprising. I am aware of at least two other lawsuits alleging malpractice (CAROLYN RUSSELL ADMIN V ARK CONTD CARE HOSP ET AL and CINDY JONES V ST BERNARDS HOSPITAL ET AL) by ACCH.

I hope you will take this seriously and investigate any part of it that falls within your area of responsibility. I am an old man with not much time left - albeit less than I might otherwise have had - and there is little more I can do. The health and lives of others are endangered every day that this hospital is in operation in such a manner. In view of my experience a review of deaths at the hospital might deserve some scrutiny - they almost killed me and I have no reason to believe that my experience was unique.

I have lived in or near Jonesboro most of my life. I remember a different Jonesboro forty years ago, particularly in the matter of crime. But that seems to be a problem just about everywhere these days. I know that malfeasance by doctors and hospitals is common everywhere as well but I ask you - must that be the case in Jonesboro? Or anywhere in Arkansas?

Please advise if I can be of any assistance. I am at your service.