Judge dismisses Nevada patient dumping civil lawsuit
By Phillip Reese and Cynthia Hubert, Sacramento Bee
A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a civil lawsuit brought on behalf of a patient who was bused to Sacramento from a Nevada state psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas.
Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital discharged James Flavy Coy Brown via Greyhound bus last February to Sacramento, where he had no connections and no arrangements for treatment or housing waiting for him. Brown’s story was the impetus for a series of investigative reports in the Sacramento Bee that found the hospital had shipped about 1,500 psychiatric patients to states across the nation in a five-year period.
In the wake of the Bee’s reports, Rawson-Neal lost its accreditation and its treatment protocols have been the focus of ongoing reviews by state and federal agencies. The hospital, Nevada’s primary facility for mentally ill people, remains in danger of losing its federal Medicare funding, pending demands for improvements.