Mental Anguish at Texas West Oaks Hospital

Caught up in dealing with a very troubled sister in crisis, Mary says she now regrets not taking more names or pressing forward more immediately with more state agencies about her sister's experiences. Months later, she contacted Menninger Clinic's Vice President for Quality Services, Pegi Pung, who wrote her that she would be forwarding her complaints to the Menninger staffers who referred Renee to West Oaks, as well as to Menninger's "clinical team who review the facilities where we refer patients." Pung wrote that she would get back to her with the results of that investigation.

"We really can't comment on it. It's not our case; it's not our patient; it didn't happen at Menninger. So I stand behind what Pegi Pung put in her letter, that Menninger cannot really get involved in another provider and the relationship that patient has with what happened at another facility. I regret that we really cannot comment any further on this case." Asked again why they would continue to send patients to West Oaks when it has been sanctioned by the state, Morris said:

"We refer patients to facilities that can provide a level of care that Menninger does not provide. So we refer patients to West Oaks, we refer patients to Kingwood Hospital, to the Methodist Hospital, to IntraCare, to all of the acute locked units. When we can't take care of the patients, we can't keep them, so we refer them out to the local hospitals."

Even if the state has fined them and said they aren't taking care of patients correctly, that they have unsanitary conditions? "I really can't comment on that," Morris said.

Mary got a better response from the state of Texas. In a letter dated April 15, 2007, Ronda Tewell of the Health Facility Compliance Division of the Texas Department of State Health Services wrote her that their investigation of West Oaks's treatment of her sister showed that "the facility had violated one or more of the applicable regulatory requirements." Violations were identified and deficiencies cited. As to what the state specifically found wrong, it won't say.

Lucinda DeBruce, CEO of West Oaks, did not return calls from the Press for comment on this story. Janet Codamo, West Oaks's director of performance improvement, also did not return calls.
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Schoolteacher Annetta Hudson worked for West Oaks from 2004 until 2007, one year full-time, the other two part-time. "I don't know about that hospital. They have a lot of things that aren't right," she says.

"We're supposed to have certain classes...and they don't do it, but when the state gets ready to come in, they want you to sign all these papers that make it look like you have gone to all these classes."

Hudson said she went outside West Oaks to keep up her training, such as keeping herself current in CPR classes.

Staffing was always a problem, she says. During the day there would be three techs, one medications nurse and one RN who would do all the charting for 20 patients on a unit. In the evening this would drop to two techs, and the overnight shift, she says, would often drop to one tech. In the juvenile units, she says, the chart nurse would be responsible for three units.

Often, she says, counselors might make it to one group patient session, but for the most part the techs were running these meetings.

Whereas Hudson had previously worked as a nurse's aide and holds a pharmacist technician's license, she says many of the techs hired had no background in psychiatry. "Mostly they hire big guys. They don't do too many females, but they did a lot of big guys. Some of those guys have been in prison or jail."

She says she left because West Oaks wasn't giving raises, and she and others were stuck at $11 an hour. She says she saw several changes in management while there, but no real changes in operation. They did renovate three units before she left.