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State cites Pinellas treatment center for substandard conditions
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Published: June 24, 2009
Updated: 06/24/2009 04:28 pm
State regulators have prohibited a Pinellas County treatment center from admitting new residents into its child and adolescent program, saying the center's "substandard conditions" pose a threat to those already in its care.
PEMHS Inc., which stands for Personal Enrichment through Mental Health Services, failed to protect other children at its Largo center from an assaultive girl, according to court records filed by Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration.
This month, the Health Care Administration inspected a ward housing nine girls and found little evidence that one patient's "explosive behaviors" were properly monitored.
Records show the girl assaulted other patients and staff on nearly a dozen occasions, but PEMHS hasn't shown how it treated the girl or how it protected anyone else, regulators say.
"Children and adolescents must not be subjected to such threats and dangers," according to court documents regulators filed June 12 in Leon County Circuit Court. "The facts clearly reflect a situation where [PEMHS] has failed to effectively manage, protect and treat its clients."
Administrators at PEMHS referred comment to their attorney, St. Petersburg lawyer Aubrey Dicus, who didn't return a message late Wednesday.
The moratorium on admissions will stay in place until regulators are satisfied that PEMHS, a nonprofit group, has corrected its deficiencies. The treatment center has since submitted a plan to correct the problems, but officials at the Health Care Administration won't release it until they have reviewed it.
Florida regulators haven't taken such action at a residential treatment center since they pulled children out of Tampa Bay Academy in Riverview in December.
At that time, state officials said they found substandard conditions and "gross mismanagement" at Tampa Bay Academy. Some of the children displaced from the academy went to PEMHS, said Shelisha Durden, a spokeswoman for the Health Care Administration.
Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285.
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