As seen in this report from the Fayetteville Observer
A 13-year-old girl with a history of depression and suicidal thoughts went to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in January 2005 for treatment.More at the Link
Within five minutes the emergency room psychiatrist — who had seen her before — called her a criminal and told her to leave and not return. But she did.
On the way back to her Fayetteville group home, and upset about the hospital visit, she suffered a skull fracture and internal injuries when she jumped from a car traveling 40 mph. This time she was treated in intensive care.
The incident was categorized by state investigators as one of the most severe violations that can occur in a hospital, and it became part of a series of violations that have made Cape Fear Valley perhaps the most heavily cited hospital in the state in the past three years.
The state conducts the investigations for compliance with federal Medicare and Medicaid standards.
Joyce Korzen, Cape Fear Valley’s chief operating officer, said violations found by the state always have been corrected, and the hospital has never lost eligibility to receive federal funding or been penalized with fines.
Cape Fear Valley, a private, nonprofit corporation, has previously disclosed that space and staff limitations in its emergency department have caused patients to wait several hours for treatment. But documents obtained from the N.C. Health and Human Services Division of Facility Services provide details on other major violations that have been previously unreported.
From January 2005 to June 2006, the state determined three instances when Cape Fear Valley was out of compliance with requirements to receive Medicare and Medicaid funding because of six major violations. Each time, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, known as CMS, issued Cape Fear Valley a termination date for losing funding.
Losing such funding would cost the hospital about two-thirds of its $1.2 billion annual operating budget. The 394-bed acute care facility is Fayetteville’s largest.
The psychiatrist who denied treatment to the 13-year-old girl resigned five weeks later, but state inspectors have found similar violations since then. Mistreatment of another suicidal adolescent was among more federal violations that were resolved just two months ago.
Many of the violations were found in the treatment of psychiatric patients whose emergency room visits have increased due to cuts in state mental health services that have affected many hospitals. But the number of violations at Cape Fear Valley, along with other violations that did not involve behavioral care, is believed to be among the highest in the state.
“I’m not aware of a system or hospital in the last three years that’s had that number,” said Cecilia Boone, a Facility Services hospital surveyor.
Boone leads the state’s investigations on complaints about federal emergency treatment standards. She was involved in all three of the recent inspections at Cape Fear Valley and said the hospital was cited with another major violation in 2004.
The state is not required to keep track of how often hospitals are cited, and CMS did not have immediate information to compare the number of Cape Fear Red Lake Indian Reservation Valley’s violations with other North Carolina hospitals.
1 comment:
I had been a patient there once and I don't think I had ever experienced anything remotely that bad ever since then.
I was placed in the wrong ward for 6 days (detox) and then accused of being drunk. This was all done without the proper blood work, or a urine test. When I was placed in detox the doctors then gave me a sleeping pill, then a urine sample was taken. I was blamed for taking the sleeping pill.
In reality, I was not drunk. The admitting nurse was vile and vindictive. Even though I was sober, she took any drinking as a history of alcoholism. I was totally confused by her disdain for me when she kept repeatedly asking how much I had to drink, 5 weeks ago. Even though it was only the odd drink, and nothing to indicate raging alcoholism, the nurse seemed to multiply that number x100.
My "drug history" was something that was totally unrecognizable to me, and completely dishonest. My state of mental health was over exaggerated as well.
This was my first time needing mental health care. It scared me into never being able to fully trust a psychiatrist ever again.
I don't profess to be perfect but that was not helpful to me. I tried discussing other issues that were bothering me, that I thought were true- like sexual abuse- and I was told I had false memory syndrome, and was labeled bipolar instead. It was pitiful how little they listened, and the "truth" they thought they had to pull out of me, with their so called powers of investigation.
All they had to do was ask.
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