Suicide Attempt at Lewistown Hospital

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A Lewistown hospital failed to assign a one-on-one monitor to a patient with a recent history of suicide attempts enabling the patient to attempt suicide for a third time.
A recently released report on a special monitoring investigation on the 123-bed Geisinger Lewistown Hospital showed the hospital failed to follow its own set procedures when the suicidal patient showed up in the emergency room on March 15.
The patient, according to the report made public recently, had overdosed on Tizanidine and gabapentin. Sixty-two Gabapentin pills were missing along with 18 Tizanidine, investigators found. Left unmonitored the patient was discovered with a call bell cord wrapped around his neck.
The patient was pulling the cord tightly and wouldn't let go, state surveyors learned after a review of hospital records. The cord had to be forcefully removed.
The hospital has yet to file a required plan of correction and officials did not respond to a request for comment.
The patient was described as highly impulsive, had suicidal thoughts and expressed a desire to be dead with a specific plan, the report states.
Despite the fact that the patient had a score on an assessment test more than double the amount triggering the requirement for one-on-one monitoring, no monitor was assigned until after the suicide attempt was detected.
The report also faults the hospital for not removing from the patient's area any objects that could be used for self harm.
State inspectors examined records of other psychiatric patients at the facility and found that the facility in another recent case failed to even assign a score on the assessment test.
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