News from Nebraska underscores concerns for California developmental center clients

An Associated Press (AP) story published earlier this week underscores concerns for the well-being of severely disabled people after they are transferred from developmental centers. The article, Deaths of clients not reviewed, reports that in February 2009, forty-seven medically fragile patients were transferred from Nebraska's Beatrice State Developmental Center. Those transfers were ordered by Dr. Joann Schaefer, the state’s chief medical officer, "following a couple of deaths at the troubled center that she said showed the facility had become too dangerous for medically fragile residents," but a year and a half later, twelve of those transferred had died.

According to the article, Margaret Huss, board member of the Mental Retardation Association of Nebraska, had warned in a letter to state officials shortly after the forty-seven residents were moved that the sudden move could have “catastrophic results.”

Of most concern has been the lack of review of the transfers and subsequent deaths, which means little has been learned that can be used to reduce the incidence of deaths in the future. Regarding the death rate of transferred clients, Dr. Schaefer is quoted as saying, "I don’t know if there’s anything I’ve learned from that particularly."

Under an agreement with the federal government, the state had to form a special committee to help identify and promptly resolve preventable causes of death by reviewing deaths of Beatrice clients, including the medically fragile removed from the center in early 2009.
But to date, the committee has reviewed just three of the 12 deaths of medically fragile former residents who were moved and less a dozen other deaths of center clients since 2007. (AP)

In California, as state developmental centers continue to be consolidated and closed, similar concerns about the fate of clients who are moved to privately-run regional centers have been raised. In fact, reports of problems date back at least to the mid-nineties in the state, and in March of 1998, San Francisco Chronicle staff writers Edward W. Lempinen and Reynolds Holding won the prestigious Unity Award in Media for a yearlong investigation of life-threatening breakdowns in California's care of the developmentally disabled.

You can read more about that series of award-winning articles in our previous post, SF Chronicle series on care of the developmentally disabled archived. A complete list of the articles, as well as related articles, is listed at www.delicious.com/parenthospitalassociation/SFChron_coverage.