AIU Investigates Private Psychiatric Hospitals and Units

Initiative asks: Do private hospitals comply with regulations to prevent injury and death?

In light of the substantial shift of inpatient psychiatric care to privatecare facilities, Equip for Equality's PAIMI (Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness) Advisory Council strongly urged Equip for Equality to focus its attention on private-sector hospitals and psychiatric units at general hospitals to ensure adequate protections for individuals in those settings. A majority of the members of the PAIMI Advisory Council are mental health consumers or have a family member who receives mental health services.

In response to that urging, Equip for Equality initiated an outreach to the private psychiatric hospital system that included a comprehensive review of compliance with the mandated national and state standards for the use of restraint and seclusion in such settings.

Equip for Equality provided information about its services to all Illinois hospitals with psychiatric units or those that operated as freestanding psychiatric hospitals. The organization visited and asked for policies and procedures governing the use of restraint and seclusion at 26 hospitals with psychiatric units in the Chicago area and nine freestanding psychiatric hospitals throughout the state.

In cooperation with Labor Relations Alternatives (LRA), Equip for Equality staff designed a tool by which the hospitals' policies and procedures could be measured for compliance with the federal and state standards for the use of restraint and seclusion. Staff analyzed, compiled and summarized restraint policies and compliance data for all the participating hospitals. This review answers the question: Do hospitals' written policies and procedures comply with regulations established in 1999 to prevent injury and death, and do those standards afford sufficient protections to ensure the safety of people with disabilities?

Based on its findings and conclusions regarding the overall lack of compliance with mandated regulations revealed by the review, Equip for Equality, together with other mental health advocates and consumers, developed a series of recommendations to ensure individual protections and the safety of people served in that system of care, as well as recommendations designed to lead ultimately to the elimination of restraint in the private hospital system. An AIU report on these findings and recommendations is forthcoming.

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