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Mental Anguish at Texas West Oaks Hospital

Go to this private psychiatric facility, and you might be helped. Or you might be shut in a room all alone and end up like Amanda, with a broken arm. Or dead.

By Margaret Downing 

Amanda Lilley was only six years old and could be loving, sweet and delightful, requiring hugs of any visitors before they left her house.

But when she was out of control, tables would be flipped, chairs smashed and the kittens she loved needed to run for cover. She once took on four men at St. Luke's Hospital and ripped out her own IV. Diagnosed as mentally retarded, autistic and with a mild seizure disorder, she'd been pooping her pants, acting up on the school bus and kicking, hitting or biting indiscriminately anyone who crossed her path. Hit by a seizure, she would stare into space without moving.

Her parents, Loretta and Jim, who have five other children, love Amanda despite her troubles. Sometimes the medication she's prescribed is enough, and sometimes nothing slows her down.

In February of 2006 she had spent a few days at Texas West Oaks Hospital, the private psychiatric facility in west Houston. As she was released, she was referred to another facility, but as her mother Loretta puts it, "They wouldn't touch her."

Back at their Conroe home, she was sleeping only two hours a night. Mom stayed with her in a locked bedroom. Dad slept out on the couch in the living room to make sure Amanda didn't go out the locked front door (as she had other times, only to be brought back by the police).

Amanda did not get any better, so they decided to take her back to West Oaks. On the way over, Amanda tried to jump out of the car onto the highway.

In the days following Amanda's February 21, 2006, check-in, staff members issued a litany of complaints. She wasn't doing well. No one wanted to room with her. She had to sleep on the couch. She had no boundaries with the male staff.

On February 28, Loretta received a voice message at about7 p.m. asking her to call West Oaks. The staffer said Amanda had hurt her arm. It wasn't anything real bad; they were just letting her know about it. She had been sent to her room for acting out in the TV room, and then the accident occurred. They were going to have a doctor look at it. Reassured, Loretta said okay.

The next day, Loretta called in and was told everything was fine. The doctor had looked at Amanda's arm, and she was fine. "Fine" was the operative word.

On March 2, Loretta came to pick up Amanda to take her to a special education assessment at the Conroe school district. That's when she found her daughter's right arm dangling limply by her side. She discovered how swollen and discolored it was when she got her into the outside light in the parking lot.

That's when she took Amanda to an emergency room and found out that yes, Amanda's arm was broken.

That's also when she decided West Oaks Hospital and its personnel didn't know what they were doing.

Increasingly, other voices are joining her in this complaint. Critics say that West Oaks is understaffed, conducts poor or no training of its employees, doesn't supervise its patients well and keeps inadequate records that make determining what is going on at this private facility very ­difficult.

The Texas Department of State Health Services has fined West Oaks Hospital a total of $155,000 since March 29, 2007, for three separate episodes in which there were violations of state licensing regulations. The state reports these findings without patient names or date of occurrence, so it is next to impossible to determine what specific cases were involved. In any event, West Oaks was cited for everything from "failure to assure humane treatment of its patients that assures protection from harm" to "failure to monitor patients" correctly to "failure to provide a sanitary environment."

What is specifically known from other reports is that on June 14, 2007, patient Mario Vidaurre died at West Oaks when the one-on-one tech assigned to him beat him to death [see "Death in a Box," by Margaret Downing, October 25, 2007]. An investigation by the state found West Oaks was at fault. On March 22, 2007, Alan Chambers, a man who was supposed to be under suicide watch, hung himself behind the closed door of his room on Unit 1. On May 12, 2006, a 17-year-old girl who tried to hang herself with one of her shoelaces was allowed to keep the other shoelace of the pair in her West Oaks room.

Frederick Williams, the tech who fought with Vidaurre and caused his death, has left the psychiatric center and retained an attorney to represent him in a lawsuit against his former employer. He's arguing he had no business being assigned to Vidaurre; he never got trained for that kind of job.

Amanda Lilley ended up with an untreated broken arm. As bad as that was, it could have been worse.
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West Oaks, at 6500 Hornwood, is accredited with the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations. It enjoys a generally good reputation in Houston. When local public psychiatric hospitals' beds are full, they often redirect patients to West Oaks.

Its executive medical director, Dr. George Santos, is highly regarded. He was named to the Harris County Hospital District Board of Managers just this March; County Judge Ed Emmett spoke of Santos's "impeccable credentials." Santos did not return a call from the Houston Press.

West Oaks takes on more difficult cases than most mental health facilities want to deal with, and some relatives say they welcome it as an alternative to a state mental institution.

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