Mind Springs and its psychiatric hospital did not have sufficient oversight to detect or prevent what the findings called “aberrant prescribing,” the letter shows. The investigation found that two of the outpatient clients in the sampling died. Benzodiazepine use also is particularly risky for people with substance use disorders. Mind Springs’ medical staff had prescribed many of those patients high doses of stimulants in addition to their benzodiazepine, which places a patient at risk of overdosing. The company’s June 2021 letter shows that, of a sampling of 58 outpatient clients prescribed high doses of the tranquilizer benzodiazepine between February 2020 and February 2021, there were concerns about the quality of care given to 52, and 28 (48%) received care so poor they faced “severe, life-threatening impact.” “We’re talking multiple times readmission rates and a fraction of the followup rate.” “If you look at the data, look at readmission rates and follow-up after patient discharge… Mind Springs Health continues to be, at the hospital, off the charts compared to other psychiatric hospitals,” David Mok-Lamme, a Rocky Mountain Health Plans executive said during a recent town hall meeting in Mesa County. It now spends nearly three times more on hospitalizations than other community mental health centers and its patients are readmitted at four times the rate, payment data show. Mind Springs drastically cut outpatient services after it opened a new $34 million psychiatric hospital in December 2018 that doubled its inpatient beds from 32 to 64. Those patients were readmitted to the psychiatric hospital from February 2020 through February 2021 within 30 to 60 days of having been released. The letter to Mind Springs’ chief medical officers shows that Rocky Mountain Health Plans’ investigation last spring found nearly half of a sampling of 54 patients at West Springs had received deficient care. As part of that contract, the company is among those responsible for investigating complaints about Mind Springs and two other Western Slope community mental health centers, and for holding them accountable.īased on information it received from a whistleblower physician within Mind Springs, Rocky Mountain Health Plans launched its own inquiry last spring. More concerns came to light this month when reporters uncovered a June 2021 letter written by Rocky Mountain Health Plans, the private company Colorado’s Department of Health Care Policy and Financing contracts to manage and pay Medicaid benefits on the Western Slope. Mind Springs’ CEO, Sharon Raggio, and two of its other top executives have resigned since December, when the Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) exposed the organization’s long pattern of failing to provide safety-net care for which it is paid tens of millions in state and federal tax dollars each year. And Mind Springs executives have not commented about what the findings say about the center’s quality of care.

Mind Springs patients remained in the dark even though problems were so acute that the state’s Medicaid contractor would not authorize payment for newly admitted hospital patients for three months until Mind Springs agreed to make wide-ranging changes.Īs of this writing, state regulatory agencies did not answer reporters’ questions about why they didn’t alert the public to the potentially fatal prescribing errors once last year’s investigation was complete. State officials kept the June 2021 findings secret despite mounting public concerns about the Grand Junction-based Mind Springs Health and its psychiatric hospital, West Springs. The problems only came to light this month as reporters for the Colorado News Collaborative, including The Gazette, were investigating. McKenzie Lange/Grand Junction Daily SentinelĪ pattern of “severe, life-threatening” prescription errors by the troubled mental health center responsible for treating 10 Western Slope counties put many of its patients at risk, according to the findings of an official investigation that three state agencies withheld from the public for more than nine months. State officials withheld the findings of a pattern of “severe, life-threatening” prescription errors in an official investigation for more than nine months. Mind Springs Health in Grand Junction on Friday, March 18, 2022.

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