Fairview Court Papers Cite Rash of Injuries

Developmentally disabled patients have suffered a total of 10 bone fractures, including a broken hip, at Fairview Development Center in Costa Mesa in the last eight weeks, according to papers filed in federal court Wednesday.

Most of the injuries were suffered or caused by patients recently transferred into Fairview from the now-closed Camarillo State Hospital, according to a brief filed in connection with a lawsuit brought by Fairview’s chief of staff, who is challenging the state’s procedures for transferring developmentally disabled patients out of the state hospitals.

In addition, according to the brief, four patients transferred from Sonoma Development Center in Northern California to private group homes have died in the last six weeks, and one patient transferred from Camarillo died in the Long Beach area.

The papers were filed in connection with the lawsuit brought by Dr. William Cable, who has alleged that severely disabled residents who have no legal guardians or conservators are being transferred into inadequately supervised group homes, resulting in injuries and death.

Cable contends that the state’s practice of transferring patients, apparently even to other state hospitals, is done too hastily and without enough attention to the patients’ behavioral and medical needs. For example, he alleges, staff at Fairview was ill-prepared when patients were transferred there.

Physicians for the patients, who have complex medical needs, have been effectively excluded from the decision-making process, and the patients themselves are too disabled to represent themselves, he has alleged. His lawsuit cites research showing that developmentally disabled have a 72% higher chance of dying in community settings than in state facilities.

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Fairview has stopped transferring the “unrepresented” patients under an agreement reached last month by lawyers for Cable and the defendants in the lawsuit, which include the state Department of Developmental Services, Fairview and various regional centers from throughout Southern California that oversee placement of the disabled in the community.

The various parties gathered Wednesday in the chambers of U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor in Santa Ana to discuss how Fairview residents who have no legal guardians or conservators can be represented in the process used to determine whether a patient should be moved into the community.

Taylor will issue his decision soon, attorneys said out of court.

The state Department of Developmental Services has a policy of integrating those patients into community group homes, in keeping with a 1994 lawsuit settlement requiring the state to reduce the number of residents in its institutions. Fairview has transferred about 300 residents into community homes since the decision. Earlier this year, Fairview received about 150 patients, most of them with mental disabilities, when Camarillo’s facility was closed.

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Advocates of the policy say the patients lead fuller, more normal lives when integrated into the community rather than being confined in an institution. Critics say many of the patients are so profoundly mentally and physically disabled that they need the higher level of care and services of the state facilities.

Karen L. Fried, deputy state attorney general, said the judge will restrict his decision only to the issue of who comprises an unrepresented patient and how can that patient be represented.

“The court is not making any decisions on the inflammatory allegations in the complaint,” Fried said.

She and other attorneys for defendants would not respond to the allegations in the latest documents filed by Cable’s attorney, saying they had not had time to study the inch-thick stack of papers.

In those papers, Hardiman provides few details about the deaths of the former Sonoma patients. The former Camarillo patient, he states, was put on entirely different medications after his transfer. A family member was told medical records for many of the transferred patients did not follow them to their group homes, according to the papers.

At Fairview, three former Camarillo patients suffered bone fractures in the last eight weeks, and six other fractures were sustained by Fairview residents who were involved in altercations with the transferred patients, Hardiman alleges.