Medication Nation

http://www.sacbee.com/health/story/958259.html

By Todd Milbourn - tmilbourn@sacbee.com

Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, May 22, 2008
Story appeared in METRO section, Page B4

A patient at a south Sacramento psychiatric hospital died because of poor care, state regulators said Wednesday – the second wrongful-death case at the hospital in three years.

The California Department of Public Health fined Sierra Vista Hospital $25,000 in the case.

How the patient died – and who the patient was – remains unclear; the report released by the state is heavily redacted. And the hospital, owned by Tennessee-based conglomerate Psychiatric Solutions Inc., refused to comment.

The case follows the highly publicized death of Sierra Vista patient Ramona Knapp in 2005. The Sacramento County Coroner’s Office ruled that the 51-year-old Sacramento woman, who suffered from bipolar disorder, died in part as a result of “restraint asphyxiation” after an orderly forcefully pinned her down.

Follow up:

Although the Coroner’s Office ruled the Knapp case a homicide, a Sacramento Police Department investigation ruled out any criminal activity. No one at the hospital faced criminal charges, although a wrongful-death lawsuit is moving forward.

Another case surfaced in March when the state health department levied a separate $25,000 fine against Sierra Vista. In that case, a nurse is alleged to have given a bipolar patient 10 times the suggested amount of the wrong anti-psychotic drug. The patient was incapacitated for days.

“This is a pattern,” said Laurel Mil-dred, executive director of the Sacramento-based California Network of Mental Health Clients. “If I had a loved one in that facility, I’d be extremely concerned.”

Kathleen Billingsley, deputy director of licensing and certification, said hospitals that continually violate health rules can lose their license, but she wouldn’t comment directly on what, if any, additional steps the state might take against Sierra Vista.

The state announced $25,000 fines against 12 other hospitals Wednesday, each involving alleged errors that placed a patient in “immediate jeopardy.”

The most recent incident at Sierra Vista occurred sometime before Feb. 28, according to Wednesday’s report.

A patient complained to nurses about a worsening medical condition, but the nursing staff allegedly failed to notify the physician on duty.

According to a state health department report, the physician later told investigators the patient should have been sent to the emergency room. Instead, the patient remained in a Sierra Vista hospital room and was later found on the floor. The patient died shortly after.

A one-story brick building on Bruceville Road, Sierra Vista is just across the street from the massive south Sacramento Kaiser Permanente complex.

Sierra Vista spokesman Mark Grip said the hospital has 72 beds and plans to add another 48 when a new $8 million expansion is finished.

As for the allegations of mistreatment and poor care: “We are declining to comment on anything, so that’s that,” he said.

Calls to the parent company’s Tennessee headquarters were not returned. The publicly traded firm runs about 100 clinics across the country, including six in California.

For the quarter ending March 31, the company posted $429 million in revenues, up 33 percent from a year ago.