A week after billion dollar corporate welfare recipient Planned Parenthood admitted to Medicaid fraud in Texas, a former manager is accusing its Delaware clinics of operating in unsafe manners.
Melody Meanor, who managed the clinic’s health center for three months in 2012, called for justice for women who were treated there by personnel whom she says were poorly trained, working in disorganized conditions and routinely skipping important elements of patient care.
She urged women treated there to seek outside medical attention to see if they had conditions that went unreported by clinicians at Planned Parenthood of Delaware, putting patients in “unnecessary danger.”
Meanor said entry-level health center assistants were poorly trained. She said two managers had serious management deficiencies. Untrained assistants were assigned duties they were not prepared to perform, Meanor said.
If that sounds similar to the Gosnell clinic in Pennsylvania, it’s because it is. Gosnell, left unchecked by a state that refused to act on complaints against him for years, allowed untrained people including a high schooler to act as medical staff.
Meanor repeated the nurses’ concerns that hundreds of women were never told that they tested positive for sexually transmitted diseases and others did not receive medication necessary to protect future pregnancies. She said she was directed to falsify records and alleged that a manager destroyed some records.
She rejected published statements by Planned Parenthood of Delaware CEO Ruth Lytle-Barnaby that the clinic’s operations had become a political issue and that two former nurses – Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich and Joyce Vasikonis – were doing the bidding of anti-abortion groups.
All three women say they are pro-choice and raising concerns only for the sake of patients and patient care.
Planned Parenthood just unsuccessfully fought a law in Texas that will mandate its clinics here be upgraded to be on par with ambulatory surgical centers. Virginia Democrat gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe hosted a pro-Planned Parenthood conference call earlier today, but was not on the call to answer questions about the corporation’s use of taxpayer dollars or its defense of very late-term abortions, or its admitted fraud in Texas.
There may be much more going on at the Delaware clinic that is now under fire.
The clinic came under scrutiny early this year when several abortion protesters noticed an unusual number of ambulances called to the Shipley Street site. Five women required emergency care after procedures.
Mitchell-Werbrich and Vasikonis reported their concerns to the state in 2012, but state officials then said they could not substantiate the claims. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the clinic for several violations, though, and this year the clinic’s primary physician, Dr. Timothy Liveright, surrendered his license to practice medicine in Delaware after regulators pursued claims against him, calling him a “clear and immediate danger to the public” because of unprofessional, incompetent and negligent conduct. Liveright has denied the claims.
Mitchell-Werbrich and Vasikonis say “unsafe and unsanitary” clinic practices put women in “grave danger.”
Meanor joins previous former Planned Parenthood workers who have begun to speak out against the billion-dollar corporation’s practices. Abby Johnson quit as manager of Planned Parenthood’s Bryan, TX operation in 2009 and has since become a vocal critic. The Democratic Party has maintained its support for Planned Parenthood, as its abuses and extremes continue to come to light.
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