The news out of Fort Wayne this past weekend is sad, and will surely touch the fuzzy warm liberals who continue to live in the past and put people ahead of privatization profits.
The Journal-Gazette reported on Sunday, June 3, on the fate of former residents of the closed Fort Wayne State Development Center:
“At least seven former residents have died in their new homes in a 16-month period since February 2006, according to state records.
In comparison, that is almost the same number of residents – eight – who died at the center during a 4 1/2 -year span from 2003 through April 2007.
“Some of them might have died at the center, too, but not as many,” former center nurse Ray Wallace said.
Well, we can’t have our cake and eat it too, I suppose. But wait: the newspaper also reports how closing the Center early actually cost the private contractor, Liberty Healthcare, money:
Liberty Healthcare took over management of the center in May 2005, with a full privatization following soon after. The official closure announcement for the campus came in October 2005, though some transitions had already begun.
The company earned a $4.8 million closure bonus when the last resident left the center, and it has the right to a $400,000 monthly management fee through the end of July.
Peter Bisbecos, director of the FSSA’s Division of Disability and Rehabilitative Services, said that the planned closure date was July 1, at which point Liberty would have been entitled to three more months’ worth of management fees. So by getting done early, he contends Liberty cost itself money.
“They are not a charity, but they did not wring every penny out that they could have,” he said.
So privatization works, because contractors don’t wring out every penny they could. Will you all now shut up, please, and let Mitch manage our state?
Adding this up, the vendor gets a $4.8 million closure bonus after the last patient was moved out on April 18th. The vendor gets a $400,000 per month consulting fee for May, June, and July. So, the Mitch and Mitch privatization efforts cost $6 million in a bonus and for three months following the closure of the facility.
At least the residents were in the good hands of a non-government private contractor whose goal was to save the state money. Well, all but the patients who died:
But according to FSSA, seven other former residents have died in their community settings – three in Fort Wayne, two in Indianapolis, one in Arizona and one in
Kentucky.Their average age was 55, typical for this particular population, according to Rosebrough. The causes of death include a heart-valve rupture, an infection after surgery and acute leukemia.
Others of more concern include two siblings who died of dehydration, one who died of sepsis and another who died of septic shock and dehydration leading to renal failure.
Brought on by Journal Gazette inquiries, the FSSA reviewed the deaths and found the siblings’ deaths could have been prevented if not for a guardian’s decision to refuse treatment. The sepsis death occurred in Arizona and was “out of our hands systematically,” according to an FSSA memo.
The septic shock death – a 59-year-old who died in Fort Wayne in November 2006 – “could arguably be classified as preventable,” the same memo stated.
I’m impressed with the “out of our hands systematically” defense. In privatization of human services, as with privatization of any other government responsibility, the wording of the contract is supreme. There must be language in there that says if the client gets shipped out of state, FSSA has no responsibility.
There’s precedence for this, of course, in other areas of state government. One that comes to mind is in corrections, where one state (oh, let’s pick any one…how ’bout Arizona?) ships its prisoners across the country to let another state (maybe, Indiana?) house them. Any minor problems that come up, such as a full-scale riot, would be systematically out of Arizona’s hands.
So FSSA was merely following the trend.
But FSSA is different. Mitch Roob is a numbers guy, and he’s not about to let a newspaper out-do him when it comes to numbers. So, the FSSA boss is having his agency enter into ANOTHER contract with ANOTHER private vendor to track the former residents of the center until at least January. No word yet on how much that one will cost us. My crystal ball foresees an FSSA press release admonishing us to stop worrying about the cost, because the cost of the newest contract will be surely cheaper than if the FSSA actually did the tracking themselves.
I’m getting the hang of this, but I still don’t understand where the preventable deaths of disabled Hoosiers (and ex-Hoosiers, if you insist on counting them) belong on the spreadsheet. That’s because I’m from the old school, where the State accepts a moral responsibility to care for those citizens with severe disabilities who cannot function in our communities on their own. Maybe the next FSSA press release will help me understand the how to reconcile the obligations of the state with the latest privatization-savings toteboard.
