The Mt. Pleasant Center in the Department of Community Health has been moderately effective in its mission to deliver selected patient care services, an audit by the Office of the Auditor General Thomas McTavish released Tuesday has found. The Center is a state-operated facility that serves people with developmental disabilities and works to empower them so they can achieve independent and personal goals. The audit, which covers October 2003 to June 2006, states that the Center needs to improve monitoring of patient services so it's complying with patient treatment plans, its own policy and state and federal laws and regulations. The audit also states that the Center didn't make sure direct care workers had the training they required, hadn't updated its training polices and hasn't developed an overall training strategy to help it document its training practices. Insuring training and policies are being followed can help keep patients and employees safe, the audit states. The Center, in its initial response, said it agrees in principle with the recommendations and is continually working to improve patient monitoring but that given the nature of the patients, there is no level of monitoring that would completely eliminate the incidents involving patients. The Center is working to provide high quality care to patients and initiating reviews of all its current monitoring programs and practices dealing with patient services. The audit also states that the Center didn't complete all patients' evaluations and person-centered plans on time and didn't document that all patients had the chance to participate in the aspects of the planning process. The audit reviewed records of 20 patients that were admitted and said the Center didn't complete all of the required assessments for 13 of them within 30 days of admission. The Center, the audit recommends, needs to complete all patients' comprehensive evaluations and plans on time and document that all patients have the chance to participate in the process. The audit also says that the Center didn't complete required dental examinations on all Medicaid eligible patients and couldn't make sure patients received dental care as required by law. According to the audit 32 percent of Medicaid eligible patients didn't receive annual dental examinations. In its initial response the Center said it is agrees with the recommendations and the findings. As for the dentistry, the Center said many of its patients need to be sedated for the basic dental procedures and the Center didn't have the services of a dentist qualified to administer the sedation. The Center also said routine annual dental examinations for patients ho need to be sedated are now being performed. The audit also states that the Center, along with DCH, needs to create procedures that allow staff at the Center to submit complaints about operations. In its initial response the Center said it agrees with the recommendations and will develop a formal process for staff to submit complaints and suggestions. The audit also found that the Center hasn't established effective controls over inventories and can't account for all inventories or make sure they are controlled and safeguarded. The Center said that it's working on policies that require annual physical inventories of supplies and items that are susceptible to theft. The Center has 60 days to file a formal response. |