The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have joined the multi-Federal agency investigations into the largest psychiatric hospital chain owned by Universal Health Services (UHS). In April 2017, Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also called for a federal probe into UHS’s behavioral facilities, describing one Tulsa, Oklahoma facility, Shadow Mountain Behavioral Health, as having “a pattern of conduct that is extremely concerning and casts a dark cloud over UHS’s ability to properly care for its patients.” In 2010, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR), a 48 year mental health watchdog, began documenting abuses that employees and former employees of UHS psychiatric facilities, patients and their families reported to it. CCHR has filed more than 4,000 complaints to law enforcement, health officials, state FBI agencies, Federal and State legislators, and to the state branches of Tricare. The UHS scandal is symptomatic of a system that there are insufficient controls and accountability, where fraud can be committed against government programs, and those responsible continue to operate, including the psychiatrists treating hundreds of thousands of Americans in such facilities. CCHR continues to call for not only Federal and State investigations but effective action that shuts down a failed and abusive psychiatric-behavioral system that seems to put profit before patients.

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http://healthimpactnews.com/2017/psychiatric-hospital-chain-under-department-of-defense-fbi-investigation/