咁都得!!
2008年的1%人被美國用公帑拯救，缺錢的是另外的99%
Nevada 精神病患者被人用單程票送走
Since
mid-2008, as the economy worsened and Nevada slashed mental health spending,
the number of psychiatric patients getting one-way tickets out of Rawson-Neal
steadily rose, ……
Nevada psychiatric hospital's busing of mental
patients was disturbing to workers
By Cynthia Hubert and Phillip
Reese - chubert@sacbee.com
Sunday, May. 05, 2013 | 01:00 AM
LAS VEGAS – In the darkness of early mornings during his
graveyard shift at Nevada's primary state psychiatric hospital, Gilbert Degala
regularly walked patients outside and watched them climb into taxis bound for
the Greyhound bus station on Main Street.
The scene made him uneasy.
Many of the patients, burdened
with mental illnesses that caused them to become delusional, suicidal or
violent, were being discharged from Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las
Vegas to buses that would ferry them hundreds of miles away. They carried their
discharge paperwork, enough medication to last them a few days, and up to a
case of Ensure nutritional supplement for the journey.
Some of the men and women knew
why they were traveling to places like Miami or Sacramento or Los Angeles,
Degala said. They were returning to family or friends. But for a troubling
number "there was no one to pick them up," he said.
Some patients, he and other
current and former workers told The Bee, appeared disoriented or unstable and
not ready to leave the hospital.
"I felt bad for these
patients," said Degala, who as a mental health technician helped social
workers and nurses manage clients. He wondered whether the men and women ever
got on their assigned buses, he said, and what happened to them if they did.
He resigned last year along with
many of his colleagues, he said, as working conditions became more stressful.
Patient care at Rawson-Neal – and its discharge practices specifically – have come under scrutiny in recent weeks amid
revelations that the hospital has bused roughly 1,500 patients to states across
the nation over the past five years, a third of them to California.
Since mid-2008, as the economy worsened and Nevada
slashed mental health spending, the number of psychiatric patients getting
one-way tickets out of Rawson-Neal steadily rose, according to a Bee review of
Greyhound bus receipts purchased by the state agency that oversees the hospital.
By last year, Rawson-Neal was busing patients out of Las Vegas at a pace of
more than one per day, shipping nearly 400 patients
to 176 cities in 45 states, according to The Bee's review.
The sheer scope of the busing
program has raised questions in California and elsewhere about whether Nevada
was systematically "dumping" indigent mentally ill patients across
state lines, prompting criminal probes in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as
well as federal regulatory investigations.
In the weeks since The Bee
published its findings, Nevada health officials have both revised and largely
defended the unusual busing practice, saying Las Vegas is an international
destination that attracts more than its share of visitors. They maintain the
vast majority of the patients transported out of state were being sent back to
their "home communities," where they had support systems or family to
meet them.
Nevada's Health and Human
Services chief has said that the increased pace of busing over the five-year
period was not related to state funding cuts, and instead stemmed from a change
in the hospital's internal approval process that has since been remedied.
Several current and former
Rawson-Neal staff members interviewed tell a different story.
Though the employees offered
different perspectives on the wisdom of sending psychiatric patients alone on
bus trips across state lines, most described increased pressure in recent years
to move patients out. And budget cuts, they said, were a driving factor.
"There is so much pressure
now to get people out as soon as possible," said one longtime Rawson-Neal
nurse, who requested anonymity for fear of losing her job.
Read more here:
http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/05/05/3286736/nevada-psychiatric-hospitals-busing.html#storylink=cpy
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