The State Hospital, perpetually running afoul of care and safety rules that have threatened its eligibility for federal money, “isn’t getting any better,” says Dee Blakley of the Disability Rights Center of Arkansas.
She sends another critical inspector’s report. This one concerns alleged verbal and physical abuse and improper restraint of an unruly patient, followed by alleged failures in recordkeeping and administrative oversight.
This is on top of this earlier finding of systemic failures at the hospital for mentally ill.
And this is after the state spent $250,000 for a year’s worth of consulting on improving things.
Response from Department of Human Sevices spokesperson Amy Webb on the latest:
Based on staff review of the incident so far, I am told there are some inaccuracies in the report. Because of patient confidentiality, I cannot go into detail about those inaccuracies. That being said, we know that there are issues at the state hospital and we are working hard to resolve them. That, unfortunately doesn’t happen overnight.
And as you probably know, in general some of the patients can be difficult, having repeated incidents and sometimes violent behavior. When those situations happen, we hope our staff handles them as trained. When they don’t, we will take action. Two staff are on admin leave pending the outcome of the investigation.