The Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo, the largest psychiatric hospital in the state, looks suitably creepy and archaic in pictures dating to its founding in 1879. That’s what you would expect from great vintage photography of an aged institution.
Trouble is, the current state of affairs at the hospital may be worse than archaic: an expose by KMGH’s investigative team reveals “deadly errors,” neglect of patients, numerous violations of required policy to protect and monitor patients, a patient death due to overmedication and neglect, and a patient suicide due to lack of oversight.
It’s worse than warehousing of the mentally ill.
“And they lied to us,” Channel 7’s John Ferrugia says.
The half-hour special, “Medical Misadventures” (the jargon in the title is taken from the coroner’s report) will air Saturday at 5:30 p.m. on Channel 7.
The project is the work of Ferrugia and producers Art Kane and Tom Burke. The chunk of airtime devoted to serious investigative reporting reflects the McGraw-Hill station’s commitment to the award-winning unit.
The lack of patient monitoring at the Pueblo hospital was addressed last year in a KMGH report on the suspicious death there of Josh Garcia. After that report aired, the Garcia family received a $300,000 settlement from the state. Changes in hospital protocols and an ongoing audit were among the results.
The current report expands on that story and reveals other violations. The disturbing findings are just part of the “larger issues facing the mentally ill in Colorado,” the report concludes.
A mental health advocate explains that overloaded community mental health centers are the problem. Private systems can’t meet the need, and so patients are pushed into the public system.
The station’s digging has already resulted in legal changes involving patient oversight. An audit of the hospital is to be completed early next year.
A followup Channel 7 report is planned next week, touching on the ways in which the Colorado Department of Human Services obstructed the investigation.
This isn’t the team’s first expose involving the health care systems in Colorado. In 2009, a 7News investigation into the deaths of children who were supposed to be under the protection of the Denver Department of Human Services won the George Foster Peabody Award.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
