Its 11-figure revenue—at the expense of patients—eclipses its 9-figure outgo in settlement and damage payments to its multitudes of victims, the targets of abuse, neglect, rape and torture.
Health departments, attorneys, human rights advocates, legislators and law enforcement have worn a hole in Universal Health Services’ corporate carpet with their repeated visits to investigate this or that atrocity, serve subpoenas, review records, file cases for violations of federal and state laws and regulations, and collect enormous settlement checks from the monolith, each ending yet another lawsuit.
“They are interested in nothing more than expansion and increasing occupancy in these facilities.”
The latest was filed against one of UHS’ for-profit hospitals, the Psychiatric Institute of Washington, DC (PIW), a facility already sporting a bloodied résumé for what a Disability Rights DC investigation called “a disturbing long-standing pattern of abuse and neglect.”
According to a civil suit filed this February, an unidentified patient was held against her will for four days under unsanitary conditions at PIW, while doctors falsified her mental health records, refused her access to a phone and otherwise held her captive.
“Behind this is a massive corporate enterprise that is continuing to expand rapidly and has made no bones about the fact that they are interested in nothing more than expansion and increasing occupancy in these facilities,” the plaintiff’s attorney, Drew LaFramboise of Greenbelt, Maryland, told The Washington Post.
Spokespeople for UHS, possibly mindful of the fact that PIW’s amenities rival those of the Bastille, did not respond to requests for comment.
The plaintiff’s ordeal was like something from a bad opera—too unreal to be believed even on the stage, but unfortunately true. A domestic quarrel. The wife leaves and walks around Union Station to clear her head. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband conceives a diabolical revenge: involuntary psychiatric institutionalization! He calls the police, tells them she’s suicidal (false) and claims she had a specific psychiatric diagnosis (also false). Police dutifully show up, surround her, cuff her and haul her off to the DC 24-hour behavioral health crisis center. There, a doctor talks to her for less than five minutes and then another doctor—whom she’s never met—adjudicates she must be involuntarily committed.
“Stunned and terrified,” according to court documents, she is restrained, hustled into an ambulance and rushed to PIW.
With all that, the PIW resident psychiatrist described her as “a calm and cooperative mother with good judgment and awareness who was eager to be there for her 6- and 9-year-old children,” according to The Washington Post.
Undeterred by that assessment, the hospital falsified a “safety risk assessment” to commit the woman and ensure the hospital could recover “a maximum amount of revenue from her health insurance carrier,” according to the lawsuit.
“This has certainly been a traumatic experience for her, a life-altering experience.”
This is the part of the movie where the Wicked Witch says: “I’ve got you, my pretty!” But PIW lacks the competence to even do evil right. For two days, nothing happened. She was incarcerated, received no “treatment” and was apparently forgotten. The court filing says it best: “Indeed, she was entirely ignored.”
When, after two days, she asked to call an attorney, she was told, incredibly, that there was no working telephone available. That she would dare make such a request, however, was apparently sufficient for another doctor—again based on an interview shorter than two sips of coffee—to declare that she was “disheveled,” “paranoid” and had “current suicidal/homicidal ideation.”
On the fourth day, “through her own ingenuity and effort,” according to the lawsuit, she smuggled out a cry for help to the outside world by means of a hospital worker’s phone, on which she called a public defender and secured a judge’s order to end her commitment.
Miraculously, at word of the judge’s ruling, the “suicidal ideation” problem suddenly disappeared. The time notation of the miraculous cure was conveniently backdated to make it appear that it happened before the judge’s ruling, the lawsuit says. Moreover, PIW’s rosy discharge summary paints a happy ending for the plaintiff’s “health care” experience, saying that she was offered therapy, daily treatment meetings, exercise, outdoor access for fresh air, sunshine and healthy food.
The lawsuit begs to differ. The place was dirty, had no hot water, and was unheated and understaffed.
The lawsuit doesn’t stop there. PIW and its parent company, UHS, violated the Americans With Disabilities Act, the DC Human Rights Act, and the patient’s constitutional rights to privacy and due process—among other laws—and intentionally inflicted emotional distress.
“This has certainly been a traumatic experience for her, a life-altering experience,” said LaFramboise. “She’s not a person who had a history of mental illness. This is an event that really struck her to her core. She is still dealing with fallout and injuries she suffered from this event, and probably will be into the foreseeable future.”
Add this one to the other souvenirs on UHS’ mantel: A $122 million settlement with the US Department of Justice, involving 18 separate actions, including fraud and improper use of restraints; a $387 million lawsuit in Virginia, involving dozens of patients subjected to falsification of diagnoses, sexual abuse and negligence; and a $535 million initial jury award to a 13-year-old raped at a UHS facility in Champaign, Illinois.
To name a few.
In nearly five months, the nation’s capital’s Department of Behavioral Health reviewed 600 cases—nearly every involuntary admission to PIW—representing many more cases than previously reviewed.
“Washingtonians deserve the highest quality of care in our hospitals. When we became aware of recent reports, the District significantly strengthened our work to ensure patient well-being and contract compliance,” Wayne Turnage, deputy mayor for health and human services, said. “Any evidence of wrongdoing will be followed by action.”
Washingtonians certainly do deserve the highest quality of care. Meanwhile, the Washingtonian currently suing for psychiatry’s over-the-top shanghaiing and insurance money shakedown has filed her lawsuit as a class action—seeking court approval to include the potential thousands of other patients involuntarily committed at PIW in the decade since UHS took it over.
But why stop there?
All of us are directly threatened by a $375 billion industry that demeans, debases and destroys human beings in the name of help.
Anyone registered as a member of our species belongs on the plaintiff side of that class action suit.
Where do we sign up?
