State leaders have quietly taken steps over the past year to privatize a troubled psychiatric hospital, a move that, if successful, could hide much of its work from public view.
Earlier this month, the Department of State Health Services solicited bids to operate Terrell State Hospital, a Northeast Texas psychiatric facility that houses about 250 people with severe mental illnesses. The hospital came close to losing millions of dollars in federal funding last year after Medicare investigators said widespread problems threatened patients’ lives.
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Expert Reporting
Andrea Ball has covered mental health, intellectual disabilities, poverty and other social services issues for more than a decade. Her work includes looking into deaths at state psychiatric hospitals, questionable child abuse investigations and problems at state institutions for people with disabilities.
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