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Washington state has approved or expanded 10 private psychiatric hospitals since 2012, promising to transform the way mental-health care is delivered in a state with a chronic shortage of treatment options. Yet on the inside, these new institutions have failed patients in ways both known and unknown to regulators and all but invisible to the public, according to an investigation by The Seattle Times.

See here for major findings by The Times.

 

PROLOGUE

A primer on Washington state’s mental-health crisis

Published August 23, 2019 | Read story »

 

 

PART ONE

How a company’s push to expand psychiatric care brought peril

Published August 25, 2019 | Read story »

 

 

PART TWO

At private psychiatric hospitals, a hidden safety record, a human cost

Published September 8, 2019 | Read story »

SIDEBAR: Behind Joint Commission’s ‘Gold Seal of Approval,’ a history of missed safety violations at psychiatric hospitals

 

 

PART THREE

Free to check in, but not to leave

Published October 6, 2019 | Read story »

 

 

SEE ALSO

 

 

↓ SUPPLEMENTAL COVERAGE AND IMPACT ↓

 

Seattle Times staff

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Smokey Point Behavioral Hospital is photographed in Marysville, Wash. August 14, 2018. 207262

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Earlier this decade, Washington had the third-highest rate in the nation of adults with a mental illness, and the second-highest rate for those whose illness interfered with major life activities. At the same time, a government survey ranked Washington’s inpatient psychiatric bed capacity almost last in the nation.This gap between need and specialized care has led to more patients waiting in facilities that aren’t equipped to treat them, and left nearly a quarter of adults with mental illness unable to get the help they needed.Yet one source of mental-health care has expanded rapidly: private psychiatric hospitals.State payments to five private psychiatric hospitals nearly tripled over five years, totaling almost $67 million in 2018.Seven such hospitals have been built or expanded in Washington since 2012. And when three more come online, they will have added more than 850 inpatient beds. All but one of the facilities are for-profit.Until 2012, state regulators hadn’t approved a new psychiatric hospital in years. What changed?As legal pressure mounted on Washington state to add psychiatric treatment beds, the expansion of Medicaid coverage and mental-health benefits created a potentially lucrative opportunity for health care companies.When all the approved psychiatric hospitals open, there will be almost three times as many beds in such facilities as there are in the psychiatric wings of medical hospitals.On paper, this expansion looks like a salve for Washington’s mental-health crisis.

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