By MEAD GRUVER Associated Press
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Two Wyoming State Hospital patients have died while staff at the mental health facility failed to follow procedures in a series of incidents of choking, neglect and medication errors over the past four months, a lawsuit alleges.
Protection & Advocacy System Inc. filed the lawsuit against the Wyoming Department of Health and state hospital directors last week in US District Court in Cheyenne. It seeks to force the department to release video recordings from inside the hospital following recent patient suicides, a rape by a staff member and the abandonment of an incapacitated woman in a living room without food, water or bathroom use for more than 24 hours. The woman, Linda Gelok, was found reeking of urine and with ants crawling on her sores.
Cheyenne-based Protection & Advocacy System Inc. is a private, not-for-profit corporation charged by law with investigating the abuse and neglect of people with mental and developmental disabilities. He has filed several lawsuits against the state-run Wyoming State Hospital in Evanston over the past three decades.
“We feel we have no choice but to do so as we are extremely concerned for the lives, health and safety of the patients at Wyoming State Hospital,” Protection and Advocacy System attorney Andy Lemke said by email. email on Monday.
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Wyoming Department of Health spokeswoman Kim Deti declined to comment Monday on the latest lawsuit or hospital conditions.
The Department of Health stopped providing the video recordings requested by the Protection and Defense System as of October. Hospital director Paul Mullenax told Protection & Advocacy System that the hospital was reviewing whether it should register patients without their knowledge under Medicaid and Medicare regulations, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Without access to video, Protection & Advocacy System would have to rely on “inconsistent” and “vague” incident reports, “inaccurate and misleading” observation records, and inaccurate witness statements when investigating patient treatment, the lawsuit alleges.
According to the lawsuit, a patient with missing teeth and no dentures drowned on July 22 after eating large chunks of meat and bread. Video showed hospital staff failing to follow through on a soft food-only order after the patient previously swallowed a hamburger whole and choked, the suit alleges.
Less than a week earlier, hospital staff found a dead patient, stiff and cold in his room. The vomit was on the floor.
That morning, hospital staff noted at the required 15-minute security checks that the patient was “calm” and “resting” with “eyes closed.” the lawsuit alleges.
The video showed the patient coughing during breakfast, another detail missing from written hospital records, according to the lawsuit.
Other recent incidents documented on video included a patient with slurred speech and weakness shortly after a head injury on Friday, but who was not taken to an emergency room until Monday; a patient who nearly chokes on food; and a patient who took another patient’s medication.
Since October, the department has failed to provide video to the Protection and Advocacy System of another patient near drowning, patients exchanging medication with each other, and a patient taken to the emergency room after choking on medication, according to the lawsuit, who did not do not name patients.
Earlier this year, Protection & Advocacy System alleged in a lawsuit against Mullenax and Health Department Director Stefan Johansson that hospital officials were preventing the organization’s access to patients. The case is pending.
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