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 Â
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."