It happened again. A few weeks ago several news sources in the Jonesboro area reported the that the operator and several employees
of a private school had been arrested and charged with causing harm to a student. I had never heard of the school and the
little information I have been able to find indicates that it is a school for autistic children. The allegations - if true as
news people say - are not only alarming but sickening. As an autistic person I was the victim of abuse at school and a lot of
it was from teachers. That was fifty years ago and autism wasn't as well understood as it is today - there is no excuse for it.
I won't castigate the local 'news' people yet - plenty of time for that later. They published the information provided by the
authorities and some interviews with parents of some of the victims and for now that's probably about the extent of what is
available. Actually it's more than usual as they just copy and paste the official statements. Probably at some future date
the criminal matter will be resolved in court and perhaps the local news people will report it. For now - except for the victims - it
might as well have never happened.
Recently the news people published a press release by a health care company planning to open a facility in Jonesboro. Pretty much the same, just copy and paste.
It seems that the Arkansas Continued Care Hospital in Jonesboro is being closed and the facility is to be used by another company plans to remodel the hospital into an acute,
70-bed psychiatric facility for children under the age of 18.
That should scare the hell out of anyone with knowledge of the situation here. I am familiar with that hospital and its history.
It is a 44-bed facility and is old and in very bad condition - to make a 70-bed hospital of that size to current standards (it was built
fifty or more years ago) its size would have to be nearly doubled and would require millions of dollars and a year or more of
construction. From what I know about the company I seriously doubt that they intend - or are capable of - any such thing. The
fact that it is intended for children is even more concerning.
The news people dutifully published the press release and that was it. On to sports and weather maybe a human interest story. Pet
of the week or whatever.
I looked into it a bit and from the rather amateurish website (I designed and created websites for quite a few years) or maybe it's
an old one that hasn't been updated - I didn't get a good vibe. Not that a slick high-dollar job would impress me but it is a sign
of misplaced priorities. The company is much larger than the one I'll tell you about in a bit - with two to three dozen operations all over
Arkansas. A lot of psychiatric and behavioral stuff. Having been in and seen what goes on in some of those
places I would be very worried if I lived in the Jonesboro area and had children.
Back to the one I said I'd tell you about. As the late Ross Perot was fond of saying - stay with
me on this. Ascent Children's Health Service was a company in Jonesboro and locations in several other small cities around
northeast Arkansas. It specialized in care of children with - guess what? Developmental disabilities. It seems that its income
was mostly Medicaid but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Medicaid billing irregularities being investigated by the state could
be. But before those got investigated something else happened.
Several incidents of child endangerment had occurred but this time a child was more than endangered. The child was dead, dying a
horrifying death that I wouldn't wish on anyone. Well, let me think about that one. In any case a five-year-old child
was left strapped into a seat on a van on a for eight hours on a hot day - you can google the gory details if you like.
Several employees were prosecuted but while some of the news media - none of the local ones as far as I remember - reported the
fact that the CEO of the company - a state legislator - was attempting to pass legislation relaxing and in some cases
removing government oversight of such facilities. Only the low-wage employees were punished - neither the CEO nor the Chief
Operating Officer (COO) and the one most
directly responsible for the death of that child were held accountable. Stick a pin there.
A couple of years later that same COO was now the CEO of Arkansas Continued Care Hospital (ACCH). ACCH was the Methodist Hospital
until it was closed around 2000. Around 2012 it was again temporarily occupied by the NEA Baptist hospital while the new
facility was being built. It closed in 2014. In 2018 Arkansas Continued Care Hospital occupied the facility.
My experience began in January of 2021 when I was sent there by St. Bernards after experiencing complications from a surgery.
I had experienced kidney failure due to a contrast dye used in my treatment and was sent to ACCH to recover, a process typically
consisting of a few weeks of dialysis while my kidneys healed.
What happened instead very nearly killed me and left me permanently crippled and barely mobile and experiencing chronic pain.
And they billed my insurance company for over a million dollars so there's that.
It's a long story but I was one of the lucky ones. The incompetence nearly killed and left me disabled but many others were
not so fortunate. During the six years it was in operation approximately twenty people died there each year. What's the
problem with that - people die in hospitals, don't they?
People die in regular hospitals. 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.
They very nearly killed me - they did kill 146 people that I know of and as I don't have access to official records that number is
almost certainly low. I know that many of those who died were far below average life expectancy (many were well under 65) and since only
under the most extraordinary circumstances could a patient die in such a place (meteorite, natural disaster, or bite of an Oxyuranus microlepidotus
or some other equally improbable event) how did twenty or more people die in that place every year it was in operation?
Given my experience most likely they were killed by the operators of the hospital.
Back to where I began - yet another case of patients being abused by caregivers. Two or three people may be prosecuted or and may
or not be punished in any significant way beyond losing their business. At least a child didn't die an awful death in this case.
The so-called news media mechanically regurgitated a press release by a business that has the lives of many children in its hands
and plans to open a facility in Jonesboro to accommodate seventy more. Did any of you investigate this company? Did any authority
investigate it? Who will protect those children? Psychiatric malpractice can be more difficult to detect and prove than ordinary
medical incompetence or malfeasance and the results can be more destructive. I am familiar with the effects of psychotropic medications and know of their deleterious effects even
when medically indicated by a competent physician. Most people are inclined to trust doctors even in the face of cases of incompetence and corruption in the
health care industry being exposed with frightening frequency. But if Aiden, Brayden or Jayden is having problems at school and the
school administrators as a first resort suggest psychiatric care it's off to the doctor and whatever the doctor says goes.
There seems to be not much regulation or oversight of health care facilities in general (how did ACCH abuse and kill patients for years with with
nothing being done?) and psychiatric medicine especially for juveniles should be subject to even more scrutiny. Damaging a
mind can be irreversible and allowing it to be done to children is especially evil. Is there not already enough evidence here in Jonesboro
that incompetent and in some cases avaricious people are causing injury and death to innocent people?
I read various reactions from locals to the news, about how wonderful it would be to have a big new hospital for children with psychological
ailments. There is a reason some of us call a large segment of the population sheeple - they never seem to look beyond the grass and assume
that as long as nothing bad has happened to them or someone close to them it's all good.
My experience leads me to believe that in a very short time that old hospital on Red Wolf Boulevard will again soon be open for business. Not
twice as large and with modern furnishings and equipment and qualified and well-vetted
personnel (those cost money too) - if that is the case I am willing to give it a chance but still believe some oversight would be prudent. If the same decrepit old building is
being used to harvest insurance and Medicaid money while innocent children suffer the consequences it would be most unfortunate. I have been in the belly
of the beast and have seen how even an adult can be helpless in the clutches of the medical industry. How much more is the risk to children - with no legal
rights and lacking the experience of adults - whose parents believe they are doing the right thing?
This letter is being sent to a few dozen 'news media' outlets and printed copies will be mailed where addresses are available. It's part of a larger
package (about 50 pages) that will be hand-delivered locally and is even now in the hands of some people in government. There is a big story there but I expect
all of them to ignore it because that is what they do. They have a job - not much of a job but it's better than not having one - and don't want to take risks. Or maybe
some mercenary type in a dying business wants to make his or her bones and like a minor league
baseball player is hoping to one day get 'the call' and move up to the majors. CNN, A/B/NBC, MSLSD. Never mind that their days are numbered - if you can
get in and milk it for a while why not? Why let someone else to be the one? This could be your big chance.