The state’s watchdog agency for people with disabilities has found that a for-profit psychiatric hospital in Southern California abused patients for years by excessively and improperly strapping them down and drugging them in violation of federal and state regulations.
The report released Monday by Disability Rights California examined patient care at College Hospital in Cerritos (Los Angeles County), one of the facilities included in a Chronicle investigative series earlier this year detailing deficient care within profit-driven psychiatric hospitals throughout the state.
At College Hospital, a 187-bed facility owned by College Health Enterprises, Disability Rights found that patients were physically or chemically restrained far more often, and for far longer, than within similar facilities in the state, often without adequate justification. At times, hospital staff held patients facedown in dangerous prone restraints that can cause suffocation…