View this article online: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2012/05/15/247584.htm
There are reports showing serious lapses in mental patient care at Southern California’s Metropolitan State Hospital.
Internal investigative reports obtained by the Los Angeles Times show workers at the Norwalk mental hospital slept on the job, failed to make regular patient checks and failed to get timely help for a patient found on the floor with a broken neck.
By the time 52-year-old psychiatric patient Diane Rodrigues got to a trauma center, she was paralyzed and she died six months later from related respiratory complications.
The Rodrigues case was among about a dozen cited in court documents by a federal court monitor who faulted the care at Metropolitan and Napa state hospitals.
It’s part of a petition to extend a U.S. Justice Department consent judgment governing the two facilities.