Doc Skoly’s Patient Ban Indefinitely Continued after Sham Hearing

Doc Skoly Ban on Seeing Patients Indefinitely Continued

Unchecked RIDOH Power over Governor McKee Reaches Crisis Level

Dr. Skoly will conduct an exclusive interview on In The Dugout at 3:00 PM

Cranston, RI – The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) has once again exerted its power over Governor McKee when it pressured a Department of Administration (DOA) hearing officer into ruling late yesterday that the original RIDOH compliance order – that banned Dr. Stephen Skoly from providing critical care to patients – should be continued indefinitely.

The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity publicly decries the hearing officer’s ruling as more evidence of the unconstitutional, unchecked, and non-science based ‘police state’ that has seized control in the Ocean State.

Earlier this month, the RIDOH openly defied Governor McKee … after he granted extensions to workers at two hospitals regarding their compliance with Rhode Island’s healthcare worker vaccine mandate … when it slapped violation notices on the Landmark Medical Center and the state-operated Eleanor Slater Hospital as a precursor to eventual fines and patient care restrictions.

“Keeping in mind that I would never put my patients at risk, that I am as immune as any vaccinated healthcare provider, and that I have been providing emergency surgical care to patients of state-run facilities … I am highly disappointed that the Department Of Health can be so unfair in singling me out for punishment,” exclaimed Skoly, the Center’s Chairman who for decades was the sole contractor to the RIDOH to provide his specialty care. Dr. Skoly has not seen patients for six weeks and was forced to lay-off his 12 person staff, who are now collecting unemployment payments at taxpayer expense. “I am left with no option but to engage attorneys and to explore legal remedies so that I can return to providing care to my patients.”

Shortly after DOH health director Alexander-Scott issued her October 1 compliance order against him, and with it becoming increasingly obvious that wards of the state were suffering because they could not receive his care, Dr. Skoly received word that Governor McKee might consider offering him a special-circumstance extension. However, in subsequent negotiations, Alexander-Scott’s staff refused to acknowledge the Governor’s offer, which was immediately pulled from the table.

“I have learned through my sources that RIDOH officials admitted that Dr. Skoly is being made an example of because of his affiliation with our Center, which has been a frequent critic of RIDOH policies,” said Mike Stenhouse, CEO. “It should be of concern to every citizen of our state that Nicole Alexander-Scott can wield such vengeful and unjust power … and that Governor McKee appears so powerless to intercede. We have reached crisis levels of unchecked bureaucratic tyranny.”

Dr. Skoly will conduct an exclusive interview with Mike Stenhouse today at 3:00 PM EST on the popular In The Dugout show at OceanStateCurrent.com/LIVE .

After issuing its compliance order against Dr. Skoly, the RIDOH also refused to comply with the prescribed regulatory process or provide any formal hearing to consider Skoly’s unique medical exemption claim, which includes high levels of naturally acquired immunity against the Covid-19 virus.

As an oral and maxillo-facial surgeon, Dr. Skoly’s practice should be regulated by the state’s Board of Examiners in Dentistry, a legitimate and long-standing regulatory review process. However, RIDOH … recognizing the great respect Dr. Skoly has rightfully earned from this board’s members after decades of stellar service as a contractor to the State and as service provider to private patients … instead sought to bypass that process and arrange for a sham hearing that would uphold its unlawful compliance order.

In early November, there appeared to a glimmer of hope to the process when McKee’s DOA appointed a hearing officer to conduct a pre-trial conference with representatives of Dr. Skoly and the RIDOH. Meetings were held last Friday and this past Monday, where over-whelming scientific evidence supporting Skoly’s position was presented … and where the RIDOH failed to cite any statutory power it had to unilaterally shut down Dr. Skoly’s practice without proper due process.

Yet all hopes for a rational accommodation were dashed, when the hearing officer, Catherine Warren, under enormous pressure from the RIDOH, ruled late Wednesday that the compliance order against Dr. Skoly be continued, essentially arguing that in seeking to protect “public heath”, the RIDOH has the “authority” to promulgate and enforce virtually any regulation it sees fit; this is a crisis in constitutional governance.

Dr. Skoly, an oral and maxillo-facial surgeon, questions why the RIDOH refuses to recognize that his, and other healthcare workers’, naturally acquired immunity to Covid19 as a legitimate medical exemption. In late September, he made public his decision to not comply the state’s October 1 vaccination mandate for healthcare workers, a decision he based on his personal medical history as well as his principled belief in individual liberty.

Since September, the Center has publicly called for the Department of Health to include natural immunity as an allowed exemption for any Covid-19 vaccine mandate.

While the Center opposes government-imposed mask and vaccine mandates, the data clearly demonstrates that “natural immunity” is an important policy consideration; and that the existing RI DOH healthcare worker vaccine mandate, for as long as it is allowed to legally stand, must be immediately modified (as the science overwhelmingly suggests) to include “natural immunity” as an approved case for exemption.

Earlier this fall, based on analysis of state and international research data, as performed by Dr. Andrew Bostom, in support of a conclusion that has been publicly advanced by a growing host of nationally prominent immunologists, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity (Center) called on the Rhode Island Department of Health to include “natural immunity” as an allowed “contraindication to vaccination” on the official RI DOH medical exemption form.

In the Center’s policy brief published by Dr. Bostom, an adjunct medical scholar to the Center and a Brown University credentialed epidemiologist, when assessing the benefits and risks of natural immunity to Covid-19 as compared with immunity from the vaccine, Bostom joins an increasing number of medical professionals and institutions in concluding that the body’s natural immune system provides a more robust and longer lasting protection against Covid-19 than do the currently offered vaccines.

Citizens can view this week’s full compliance order and can #StandWithDocSkoly by signing a petition on the Center’s website at RIFreedom.org/DocSkoly.

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