As reported by the Seattle Times on August 25, 2019:
How a company’s push to expand psychiatric care brought peril
US HealthVest is at the vanguard of a quiet transformation in how patients receive care for mental health and drug addiction in Washington. Since 2012, the state has approved or expanded 10 private psychiatric hospitals, nine of which are for-profit. This expansion will add more than 850 inpatient beds in a state with one of the highest rates of mental illness and least capacity to treat it, holding the promise of specialized care for patients who often land in jails or hospital emergency rooms.
Without doubt, the addition of Smokey Point has provided much-needed mental-health care to patients in an underserved area. Yet the state’s early embrace of US HealthVest, after Washington’s own failures to meet patient needs, has brought a new peril into the system: a model proven to deliver profits that has routinely failed vulnerable patients, an investigation by The Seattle Times has found.
Other published reports:
- Massachusetts health-care system conducting a review of US HealthVest after Seattle Times investigation
- New Tacoma psychiatric hospital supports leader despite report critical of past employer
- Amid serious violations at Washington’s private psychiatric hospitals, a regulator remained on the sidelines
- The tragic cost of behavioral health system flaws
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