DCF reviews deaths at GEO-run state hospital

7-25-2012 Florida:

Three gruesome deaths at the privately run South Florida State Hospital triggered an investigation that revealed concerns that employees were overmedicating patients and failed to call the state abuse hotline after a patient died in a scalding bathtub, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

State officials requested a review of the facility "in response to significant events in past several months," including the deaths. The state also reviewed cases of individuals who had been placed into solitary confinement and restraints multiple times and other incidents at the facility, but the report offered few details of those incidents.

The 335-bed facility, located in Broward County, is operated by The GEO Group Inc., a Boca Raton-based firm that is one of the world's largest private operators of prisons and detention centers. Many of the patients are mentally ill and admitted against their will because they are considered a threat to themselves or others. Some are admitted because they are not competent to stand trial, but don't need to be in a high-security facility.

Pablo Paez, its vice president of corporate relations, declined comment Wednesday. The state has paid the company over $500 million to run the hospital since 1998. It was one of the first state civil psychiatric hospitals in the U.S. to be fully operated by a private company.

GEO runs three other facilities in Florida: the Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia, which treats sex offenders; and mental health facilities in Indiantown and Florida City for patients who aren't competent to stand trial or have been found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Department of Children and Families Secretary David Wilkins said his agency is renegotiating GEO's contract. Its facilities will be required to have a DCF investigator on site - a practice already used in the state-run facilities.

Wilkins said GEO has complied with a corrective action plan and praised the facility, which has a more therapeutic environment compared to other state-run facilities, which he said are cold and institutional.

The deaths happened within a two-month period.

- In August 2011, Loida Espina died after her head was perhaps slammed through a wall.

A staffer found her and laid her down. The staffer later returned and found her unresponsive. The report is unclear whether someone actually put Espina's head through a wall and it doesn't say whether the allegation was about a staffer or another patient. GEO declined to give details.

The report offered no other details on her death. ..For the rest of this story: by KELLI KENNEDY