Federal probe into Las Vegas Greyhound Therapy...
A Nevada psychiatric hospital under scrutiny for busing hundreds of patients out of state in recent years suffers from "systemic" problems that compromise the safety of the patients who are being discharged, a federal investigation has determined.
Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada's primary public hospital for mentally ill people, is at risk of losing critical federal funding if it fails to correct problems identified in a report issued Wednesday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The agency's report stemmed from a specific complaint about the treatment of a homeless man, suffering from schizophrenia and depression, who in February was discharged from Rawson-Neal to a Greyhound bus bound for Sacramento, without any arrangement for his treatment or housing.
But given the concerns raised, the agency has embarked on a second investigation of the hospital's policies and practices, said Rufus Arther, director of hospital operations for the agency's Western region
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Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/09/5406543/federal-probe-cites-major-problems.html#storylink=cpy
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I agree that it seems unlikely that one Las Vegas hospital will be the sole institutions doing this. A number of states are cutting back on medicare spending and who is easier to abuse than mentally ill whose GAF is so low that they cannot care for themselves? Those people are almost certainly not going to be able to seek the legal aid needed to fight back.
This really isn't a problem with the philosophy of community-based treatment--which never said dump patients in neighboring or distant states. Community-based treatment was an attempt to move away from the deplorable conditions of mental hospitals after WWII. Conditions so bad that a documentary made about one of them--Bridgewater State Hospital, in Massachusetts--released in the late 1960's under the title Titicut Follies (cuts of which are found in various you-tube files) was actually banned from viewing by the public by the court.
In the third quarter of the last century, the public was outraged by deplorable treatment of the mentally ill. A better more humane treatment was supposed to be found through community based care for mental illness.
The dumping going on is certainly not better treatment.
It does need light shown on it. And in that respect a federal investigation is a good thing.
But, I'm not hopeful that an anti-social spending Congress will voluntarily reach into federal pockets to replace monies being cut out at the state level.
