Community Grievance Decision Digest

TREATMENT - TERMINATION OF OUTPATIENT TREATMENT

The decision summaries regarding this law may be found in the document:
Community Grievance Decision Digest: Decisions. (PDF, 512KB)

THE LAW:

“Patients have the right to be free from having arbitrary decisions made about them. To be non-arbitrary, a decision about a client must be rationally based upon a legitimate treatment, management or security interest.”

HFS 94.24(3)(h), Wis. Admin. Code [Emphasis added.]

[Note:  See also the Treatment – Prompt & Adequate section of this digest.]

DECISIONS:

1. A client felt her termination from outpatient therapy constituted “abandonment” which left her without mental health services and without options for a smooth transition into other services. Both she and her therapist agreed that the attainment of measurable objectives was not being met and that she was no longer making progress in treatment. The personalities involved were not meshing together in a productive fashion and the kind of therapeutic work and progress that the client really wanted was not getting done. This could have led to voluntary discharge, rather than termination, by encouraging joint decision making and agreement by both the client and the therapist. The termination of a client’s outpatient therapy did not rise to the level of a violation based on the rights and rules that are currently in place. However, the best practice would be to achieve consensus that treatment goals were not being met and to mutually agree to discontinue therapy. (Level III Grievance Decision in Case No. 05-SGE-12 on 5/16/06)

Last Updated: July 12, 2010