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A long time ago there was a hospital on Stadium Boulevard now known as Red Wolf Boulevard. It was the Methodist Hospital of Jonesboro then and had had a heliport. I occasionally saw helicopters arriving and departing. After being acquired by one of the Medical Industry rollups - I forget which one - it was closed. The facility was empty for probably fifteen or more years before being used temporarily by the NEA Baptist hospital. When the new NEA Baptist facility was complete it was closed again. Several years later it was reopened as the Arkansas Continued Care Hospital (ACCH). After one or two CEOs that didn't stick around long one James Cox was appointed CEO. The same James Cox who had been the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Ascent Children's Health Services. The one that let a child die a horrible death because of greed. Are you with me so far? ACCH was in a decrepit old facility that should probably have been bulldozed but instead it was used as a recovery and rehabilitation facility. Stick a pin there. They put up a new sign and some fancy chainsaw carvings of eagles and wolves and things but had low-budget staff. When they installed the huge pole with wolves I was in a room on the second floor. I had about thirty drugs in me - I didn't know it until later - and was in and out and often in between as I watched them putting the wolf totem pole. My experience is narrated elsewhere.
ACCH was in operation for about seven years. I don't have access to official records but I can document about
twenty deaths per year during that time. So what? People die in hospitals, don't they? OK, stay with me on this -
ACCH wasn't a regular hospital. It did not receive emergency patients, it did not have intensive care or critical care
units, no surgery was performed there. It was a recovery and rehabilitation facility and nothing more - a patient with
a life-threatening condition would never be admitted there and any patient that experienced such a condition should
have been immediately transferred to a regular hospital. The yearly number of deaths in such a facility should be zero
and even one should require an investigation and accounting. Outside one of the most unusual occurrences the
annual death rate should have been ZERO.
The operators of that hospital are responsible for - at a minimum - a hundred and forty wrongful deaths. Some of
the victims were quite young and over half were well below average life expectancy.
Conveniently the hospital is now out of business. Sound familiar? And another company has bought the decrepit joint and according to the regurgitated press releases: Methodist Family Health plans to remodel the hospital into an acute, 70-bed psychiatric facility for children under the age of 18. That was a 44-bed hospital over fifty years old. The stated plans would require at least a year of construction and millions of dollars. Think 30-40 million or so to put a modern hospital of that size there. When they get it finished they can start stocking it with revenue-generating units. Kids have some trouble at school and Mommy and Daddy go to see the school people and they recommend psychological examination. Off to the doctor and maybe it's prescriptions for psychopharmaceuticals or they need to be hospitalized for a while. If any of those seventy beds are unoccupied the kid will probably go there for at least a while. Observation and evaluation don't you know? The well-heeled parents have insurance and the others have Medicaid - either way it's a pretty profitable enterprise. The two actual hospitals in Jonesboro - ACCH wasn't actually one - have about 220 and 450 beds. I have little doubt that the operators of the new facility will have little trouble keeping it filled. If kids can't be protected from negligent daycare workers will they be safe from incompetent doctors? Mental health should require much more oversight than regular medicine - I learned that psychotropic drugs used to treat mental illness can actually cause a normal person to appear crazy and do crazy things. Mess up treating a physical illness and the patient doesn't improve you try something else or if you really screw up the patient dies. Making a mistake with behavior-altering drugs on anyone but especially a child can break a young mind beyond repair. I would be inclined not to care much if the potential victims were not helpless children. It is evil whether one is left to die in a hot van or mis-diagnosed and mentally crippled by incompetent doctors in a hospital where profit is the main objective. We - those of us who pay attention - regularly hear about atrocities occurring in California of Massachusetts or wherever - patients being exploited for money or incompetent doctors maiming and killing many before being caught. Does this go on in Jonesboro until one day people around the country hear about it happening in Jonesboro, Arkansas? I suspect there is a pretty good chance it will.
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