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Saturday, June 13, 2009
Five Years Later, Patients Accounted For
By Colleen Heild
Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Investigative Reporter
The search is over, the state says.
After more than five years of investigation, all but a few of more than 1,000 people have been accounted for after their release into the community decades ago from state hospitals for the developmentally disabled.
Those located have had their cases referred to the state's Adult Protective Services for assessment and follow-up, according to a report issued Friday by Gov. Bill Richardson's office.
The administration launched the investigation after Journal reports in 2003 on three former residents, all women, who were abused and neglected in a Los Lunas home where they were taken after they were released from a state hospital.
Richardson asked Santa Fe attorney Nancy Long to oversee the inquiry in an attempt to ensure the welfare of other former residents discharged from the Los Lunas and Fort Stanton state hospitals from 1970 to 1987.
The investigation centered on those years because the now-closed hospitals began a major effort to move into the community in the 1970s.
"Governor Richardson is satisfied that the investigation resulted in a thorough accounting of the vast majority of the hundreds of vulnerable citizens who were discharged," spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said Friday.
Perhaps more important, Gallegos added, "The investigation helped ensure that those former patients have access to the appropriate state services and benefits."
Lawyers who are suing the state in federal court over what they say is inadequate follow-up and care for the former patients said they hadn't had a chance to read the report issued late Friday.
However, one of them, Peter Cubra of Albuquerque, said that, until now, "the governor's lawyers have gone to great lengths to prevent us from learning what's happened to these people.
"Despite those efforts, we have found a small number ourselves and have found several of them who were experiencing serious problems and who got no help from the government after the government found them," Cubra said.
Jerry Walz, an Albuquerque lawyer defending the state in the proposed class action lawsuit, lauded the report and investigation.
Walz said the findings "validate the independent investigation undertaken by defense counsel (in the lawsuit) where we performed essentially the same tasks."
Long couldn't be reached for comment.
Long's 45-page report said that a private security firm she hired to locate the former residents in New Mexico and in other states focused initially on individuals believed to be the "most difficult to find and who had a greater probability of being in a risky or vulnerable environment."
Among the findings:
• Nearly one-fourth of the former hospital residents were deceased.
• The majority of individuals had received or were receiving benefits through the state as of November 2008. Of those 534 people, 93 appeared to receive benefits but without regular follow-up by a caseworker.
• Eighty-nine people had been placed in homes of people who were not relatives — as was the case of the women in Los Lunas — or no discharge information was found for them. When located, they weren't receiving state benefits, according to available information.
• Another 163 people who weren't receiving state benefits had been discharged to live with a relative or at a group home.
Horror story
Richardson launched the inquiry after the newspaper stories reporting that the three former Los Lunas Hospital residents had been kept for more than 20 years at a private home where they had been abused and neglected.
The state later paid $15 million to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of the three women, who were released as young women into the Los Lunas home of a hospital housekeeper.
Even after two of the three became pregnant, the state didn't investigate the circumstances and failed to move them to safer homes.
The pending federal lawsuit alleges there were "wholesale failures" in the system that allowed the release of developmentally disabled people from state institutions without proper planing, monitoring or safeguards.
Walz said the governor's investigation shows that the case of the three women was "an anomaly."
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