Elderly Found Untreated at 80 Mental Care Centers

Medicare will bar 80 community mental health centers in nine states from serving the elderly and disabled because investigators found patients watching TV or playing bingo instead of getting the expensive psychiatric care they were supposed to receive.

“Playing bingo and watching television at $600 to $700 a day is not a Medicare benefit, and we’re not going to allow it,” Medicare administrator Nancy-Ann DeParle said Tuesday. She said patients were not receiving outpatient psychiatric care at the targeted centers.

Medicare sent letters to 20 centers in Florida, Texas and Louisiana, giving notice they no longer can participate in the national program. Letters will be sent to 60 more centers in a total of nine states--also including Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas and South Carolina--in the next few months.

The agency would not release the names of any centers until they had been notified.

Medicare has experienced problems with abuse across the board. Government auditors estimate about 11 cents of every dollar spent on the health insurance program for the elderly and disabled is wasted on error or fraud.

New benefits offered in the 1990s, including home health care and the outpatient mental health treatment, have proved particularly vulnerable to profiteers. Last fall, the Clinton administration blocked any new home care companies from joining its program for several months to get a grip on rampant abuses.

At some of the mental health centers, as many as 90% of patients do not have mental illnesses serious enough to qualify for the special care, DeParle said. And those who do qualify are not getting the care they need, and will be helped to find another place to go.