How Acadia, a leading hospital chain, reportedly traps patients
The New York Times has released the results of an investigation into allegedly improper and illegal conduct by Acadia Healthcare, one of the US’s largest chains of psychiatric hospitals. The investigation discovered that at least some of Acadia’s doubled-since-Covid profits appear to be predicated on Acadia “luring patients into its facilities and holding them against their will,” even when detaining them was not medically necessary.
As the Times notes, “In at least 12 of the 19 states where Acadia operates psychiatric hospitals, dozens of patients, employees and police officers have alerted the authorities that the company was detaining people in ways that violated the law, according to records reviewed by The Times. In some cases, judges have intervened to force Acadia to release patients. Some patients arrived at emergency rooms seeking routine mental health care, only to find themselves sent to Acadia facilities and locked in.”
For example, as the Times further explains, a social worker spent six days inside an Acadia hospital in Florida after she tried to get her bipolar medications adjusted. A woman who works at a children’s hospital was held for seven days after she showed up at an Acadia facility in Indiana looking for therapy. And after police officers raided an Acadia hospital in Georgia, 16 patients told investigators that they had been kept there “with no excuses or valid reason,” according to a police report. The Times concludes, “Acadia held all of them under laws meant for people who pose an imminent threat to themselves or others. But none of the patients appeared to have met that legal standard, according to records and interviews.”
At Acadia, patients were often held for financial reasons rather than medical ones, according to more than 50 current and former executives and staff members. And Acadia, which charges $2,200 a day for some patients, recurrently deploys an array of strategies to persuade insurers to cover longer stays, employees said. “Acadia has exaggerated patients’ symptoms. It has tweaked medication dosages, then claimed patients needed to stay longer because of the adjustment. And it has argued that patients are not well enough to leave because they did not finish a meal.”
According to the paper, unless the patients or their families hire lawyers, Acadia often holds them until their insurance runs out. “We were keeping people who didn’t need to be there,” said Lexie Reid, a psychiatric nurse who worked at an Acadia facility in Florida from 2021 to 2022.
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We are investigating Acadia Healthcare for abuses beyond the insurance fraud described in the Times article, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
If you or a family member have experienced abuse while under the care of Acadia Healthcare, we urge you to contact a survivors’ rights lawyer at Lieff Cabraser today about your case and potential recovery. You can call us toll-free at 1 800 541-7358 or use the form on this page to send us a confidential message.
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