Hospital scrutinized for alleged negligence

Hospital scrutinized for alleged negligence

By Gil Hopenstandand Donna

WongSummer Bruin Staff The first day of the UCLA

Neuropsychiatric Hospital’s (NPH) accreditation survey began
with stories

alleging negligence and impropriety.

On Wednesday, family members of several

hospital patients, many of whom are no longer alive, spoke
before the board which

regulated the institution’s operating license.

"This is not an investigation.

This is what’s known as a survey. We take information for the
purpose of

identifying joint commission standards related to this process,"
a Joint

Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
(JCAHO) official

explained before the meeting.

The Chicago-based commission visits more than 5,300

health care institutions every three years to review and grant
scores that

reflect hospital performance and patient care.

NPH’s current conditional status ­

given to only 1 percent of hospitals surveyed by the review
organization ­ was

determined after poor patient record documentation was
discovered on several

occasions.

In addition, within the last 12 months the NPH has come under
fire for

the quality and efficiency of patient care. Top administrators
have also recently

resigned, including the directors of the hospital and the
Neuropsychiatric

Institute.

Despite this, U.S. News and World Report recently named UCLA’s
NPH as

the best psychiatric hospital in the western United States for
the fifth

consecutive year.

"There are an awful lot of talented, good people who help
make

NPH a quality, caring organization. The quality of care here is
premiere," said

G. Michael Arnold, the hospital’s recently-appointed director.
"The bru-ha-ha

that comes from the media overshadows the good we do here."

Arnold said he

believes in the hospital staff’s ability to pass the survey
scrutiny.

"We’re

confident that we’re in compliance," he said, explaining that
the accreditation

is a test against set standards developed by the commission.

In contrast to

Arnold’s confidence in NPH, patients’ families came before the
board "to seek

justice" by exposing problems, said Anne Chao.

She was just one of a handful of

people there to tell of their experiences with UCLA
neuropsychiatric healthcare.

In her presentation to the commission, Chao attributed her son
Gene’s 1992

suicide to the negligence of NPH direction.

During his entire three-year

enrollment as a UCLA law student, Eugene Chao sought
psychological care from

student health services. He received counseling and medication
supervised by NPH

doctors, and his treatment was finally terminated in December
1992.

Although Chao

had attempted suicide and was diagnosed as clinically depressed,
he was never

involuntarily hospitalized. Two weeks after his therapist
"dumped" him, Anne

Chao said he jumped off the Tishman Building on Wilshire
Boulevard.

"They did

what medical doctors don’t do. They don’t take care of the
patient and they just

write them off," she said.

Anne Chao points to the suicide note Gene left behind

as proof of his therapist’s ineptitude.

"What really hurt was the feeling that

you were so quick to get rid of me in the end, just like
everyone else," Gene

stated in the note addressed to his doctor. "My perception …
was that you were

too busy and that I didn’t really rate anymore. When I left that
day, I felt so

alone, so abandoned, so worthless."

During his career at UCLA, Eugene interned at

Asia Watch, an international human rights advocacy group.
Through Asia Watch, he

pursued his life-long fight for justice, she said.

"The reason why I came to the

hearing was for the same reason my son lived ­ for justice.
UCLA has a reputation

for excellence, but they don’t provide what they say they can
provide," Anne Chao

said. "They seem to be more like a research group where they
don’t have the

interest of the patient at heart."

Relatives and friends of other suicide

patients also spoke before the commission to voice their
concerns. Brothers of

Antonio LaMadrid, who jumped to his death on campus in 1991,
said the hospital

failed to properly care for Antonio when he relapsed into
schizophrenia.

Also

present Wednesday were relatives of Sujon Guha, who hanged
himself with a belt in

his NPH room in 1993. While lauding the prestige of
UCLA-provided heath care,

they pointed to the unsupervised patient as proof of problems
within its

organization.

"The reason we are here is if the authorities of the
organization

know about it, you can do something about it for the future,"
said Choudhy

Bikram, Guha’s uncle.

However, not all the families present that day came with

negative stories to tell the commission. Richard Day said he
described how well

his 35-year- old son is being treated during his battle with
schizophrenia.

"As

far as I’m concerned, it’s a godsend," said Day, describing how
doctors in France

recommended UCLA’s hospital by name when his son had a breakdown
about five years

ago. "They recommended it because its the best program in the
world."

"I would

never worry about him being mistreated (at NPH)," Day said,
while acknowledging

that "this doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be mistakes and that
all patients

could be helped."

While Day’s son is currently part of a schizophrenia
research

program, it is not the same program federal authorities
investigated for improper

treatment of patients four years ago.

Still, new allegations have surfaced about

the level of supervision given to resident psychiatry students
at NPH.

A letter

was sent to the commission last week claiming that patient
records were altered

to show that doctors oversaw student work when in reality they
did not. "An

allegation is an allegation. We have no knowledge of anyone
altering patient

records and they have not provided us with any type of proof,"
Arnold said,

adding that such behavior is "against our ethical and written
policies."

Promising to investigate regardless of the committee’s findings,
Arnold asserted

that "integrity is critical."

Results from the commission’s three-day survey last

week will not be known for about another two months.

Regardless of the survey’s

outcome, patient’s families were thankful for the opportunity to
share their

stories.

"They are so monumental that you forget they are a public
hospital and

they aren’t doing their job," Anne Chao said. "I felt that day,
I was in the

territory of the dragon and I was in a cave where this group of
people were

helping me."