District Called Insensitive Over Its Handling of Medical Claims

Rejecting claims for medical-bill reimbursement by several students who became ill at a school-sponsored concert in April, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board has forwarded the claims to the district’s insurance company.

District officials said denying the claims is a routine step before turning them over to the insurance administrator, but parents nevertheless called the board unsympathetic.

Eighteen students singing at the district’s “Stairway of the Stars” performance April 13 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium experienced dizziness, nausea, headaches and fainting after complaining of smelling strange odors. The audience of 2,550 was evacuated.

Santa Monica fire officials were unable to find evidence of fumes or toxic substances and speculated that the cause was mass hysteria.

Mass hysteria, which doctors prefer to call “group conversion reaction,” is a type of psychosomatic symptom that generally occurs in high-stress situations within a tight-knit group, according to Dr. Michael Propper, a resident in psychiatry at the UCLA Center for Health Services at Veterans Administration Medical Center.

8 Filed Claims

Eight students filed claims, ranging from $388 to $1,285, against the school district.

The school board denied that it was insensitive to the students’ claims. The board last week asked for immediate feedback from the insurance company before the company makes a final decision is made on the claims, said board member Della Barrett. Usually the board is not involved in the review of claims and receives only a periodic summary of the insurance company’s decision on claims, Barrett and other district officials said.

“In this case, we’re real concerned about the children and their families. . . . We’re concerned about something happening during a school-sponsored event, and I want to make sure the right thing is done,” she said.

Terry Pearson, the district’s director of pupil and administrator services, said letters were sent to parents, offering assistance in filing claims.

Sharon Taub, who submitted a claim for $1,285 for her 11-year-old daughter’s ambulance, emergency room and doctor’s bills, said last week that she has not received any letters from school district officials. She said she is “disturbed at the apparent lack of caring on (the school board’s) part.”

Adults Also Affected

Taub also said the mass-hysteria theory was nonsense.

“There were adults also affected. I received medical treatment, and I’m not an adolescent and I am not given to hysteria.” She said she and her daughter, Vanessa, had sore throats and shortness of breath. Vanessa said the auditorium smelled like a “mix of gas and paint” and that she fainted right after she was taken outside.

The city of Santa Monica in June rejected claims for five students’ medical bills, said Chuck Cota, liability claims supervisor for the city. “We didn’t see any basis for any liability. . . . We investigated it, and the Fire Department was out there. We couldn’t find the source of any toxic-fume escape.”

The students can pursue their claims against the city by filing lawsuits within six months of when the claims were denied, Cota said. No lawsuits had been filed as of last week, he said.

Meanwhile, UCLA and Los Angeles County Department of Health Services researchers, who have sent a questionnaire to several hundred students who were at the Civic Auditorium, have not determined a cause for the symptoms.

“The possibility of a group effect has to be considered, because the people that were affected primarily were in a specific area” of the auditorium and were stricken in rapid succession, said Dr. Michael Propper, a resident in psychiatry at the UCLA Center for Health Services at Veterans Administration Medical Center. “But the other side is that we haven’t interviewed any of the people yet.”