Those seeking treatment at Aurora Las Encinas Hospital pass through manicured gardens on their way to a facility that costs as much as $1,400 a night. For the money, the private Pasadena psychiatric hospital promises world-renowned care and privacy, with a decades-long reputation for service to the rich and famous.
In the last year, however, Las Encinas has been inspected at least six times by government regulators who have documented numerous failures in patient care, The Times has found. Despite hospital officials' promises to fix deficiencies, many of the same problems were found by inspectors when they went back late last year to check on progress at the facility.
Among significant problems reported in documents newly releaed to The Times:
* A 26-year-old patient died in 2006 after staffers failed to check on him for 24 hours, despite a doctor's orders that he be monitored "very closely." The circumstances are very similar to a death reported last year by The Times. In both cases, Las Encinas mental health workers falsified logs to show that the patients had been checked every 15 minutes, according to government inspection reports.
* An internal memo indicates that hospital administrators knew last May that they had a problem with people sleeping at work. Diane Hobbs, the facility's nursing director, warned staffers they could be fired if caught. Three months later, law enforcement officials told The Times that a 14-year-old female patient had been raped by a 16-year-old patient while hospital workers and the suspect's probation officer slept nearby. Prosecutors have charged the boy with rape, and he will be tried as an adult.
* A 10-year-old boy was exposed to "cursing language as well as sexually explicit language" in a group session after he was placed in a program intended for 12- to 17-year-olds. He had been admitted for treatment after attacking his brother and threatening to jump out of a second-story window. Hospital officials admitted they erred in the placement.
* Doctors allowed a patient to remain at the hospital's expensive and exclusive Two South unit -- which offered concierge service and a personal attendant -- even though she was no longer receiving psychiatric care. A doctor told inspectors in October that the patient, who began treatment 10 months earlier for depression and alcohol abuse, "was not acutely mentally ill" but "had the resources" to continue staying at the hospital in order to meet the terms of a court order.
