Systematic Problem
There is a major problem in Florida even when the police do manage to make a mental health arrest [Baker Act], and not much is being done to correct it. Just today the local paper reported: Baker Act patient escapes, calls taxi, heads to Destin.
The local hospital is owned by HCA, and HCA hospitals in Florida have a rotten record on keeping people who have been ordered held in a facility for mental evaluation from walking away. If they can’t or don’t want to confine these people, they shouldn’t apply for the contract to supply the services.
If your actions have been obvious enough to actually be confined by a Baker Act proceeding, you are dangerous to yourself or others. The purpose of the confinement is to protect people while the best course of action is determined. Some people just need their medication straightened out, other need to be confined to the secure state facility. Until that is determined, the individual is a “ward of the state” and the state is responsible for them.
I assume it will take a major law suit before any real reform takes place. I hope it doesn’t involve mass murder.
4 comments
Part of the problem is that HCA’s hospitals are deliberately understaffed in order to increase profit. My mother had the dubious pleasure of being illegally fired by HCA after blowing the whistle on them with state regulators. She provided the state regulators with documentary proof, in the form of memos, that HCA deliberately made a business decision that settling lawsuits for poor care caused by understaffing was cheaper than providing proper staffing. The regulators promptly slapped HCA with a token fine, which was reduced to even more of a token by an administrative law judge when HCA appealed, they told HCA who narc’ed on them and HCA promptly (illegally) fired my mother, my mother shrugged and went to work for the state (if you can’t beat’em, join’em, I guess) where she retired a couple of years ago.
As far as I know, HCA hasn’t changed their policy on staffing since then — i.e., if you get sick, go anywhere *but* an HCA hospital, because they deliberately kill a certain percentage of patients in order to save money on staffing costs. It doesn’t surprise me that Baker patients manage to escape. The fire doors aren’t allowed to be locked for obvious reasons, there’s no staff to see them go for the fire doors, and patients aren’t allowed to be restrained unless there is sufficient staffing to un-restrain them in case of a fire and of course there isn’t. Indeed, at my mother’s hospital, the “mental wing” as the nurses called it was just an ordinary hospital wing, with no (zero) provisions for dealing with mental health issues. No padded rooms, no strait jackets, there were stretchers with straps but they were allowed to use those only if the patient attacked staff or other patients and had to be restrained for a while to calm him down, they had nothing, just regular hospital rooms and a regular nurse’s station that was usually empty due to lack of staffing.
So that’s HCA. Now you know.
– Badtux the Medical Penguin
My brothers and I filed a complaint against the hospital involved with the state after the way my Mother was treated the last time she was hospitalized, and she won’t go near the place. There are other hospitals, and she has the right to go to the Eglin base hospital if she wants. The other hospitals are further away, but she never intends to be at the HCA hospital’s mercy again.
The problem was staffing, and we let the local administrator know that we didn’t buy his claim of adequate staffing. You don’t run 12 hour shifts if you have adequate staffing.
One of the down-state papers ran a report on Baker Act “escapes” a few weeks ago, and locally one of the patients was killed in an armed stand-off after escaping, the very thing his family was trying to avoid by invoking the Baker Act proceedings. I don’t know if they have the money to sue, but they should.
My mom has been in and out of the hospital for the past year. So I am seeing up close what the system is really like. And it is scary. One of the reasons she has been re-admitted twice is for treatment of the c-diff infection that they “gave” her when she was in a few months ago.
Until the “for profit” part changes, we will continue to see more and more of this as they cut corners and staff.
LadyMin´s last blog post..H+ Magazine
All of the safe guards have been removed in the name of “efficiency”.
We have a local practice that specializes in infected wounds, and the first thing the doctor does is get his patients out of the hospital. I had a friend who was treated by him, and he flat said that he can’t cure people who are constantly being re-infected in that “cess pit”.