Reports from news outlet Oklahoma Watch detail how Tulsa's Saint Francis Hospital is “disappearing” elderly patients for financial gain. KWGS' Elizabeth Caldwell sat down with reporter JC Hallman of Oklahoma Watch to learn more. Listen above or read below.
ELIZABETH CALDWELL: Well, welcome to the studio, JC.
JC HALLMAN: Hi.
EC: And you've been writing about Saint Francis Hospital effectively seizing adults from their families, older adults from their families. You've written two articles. Right?
JH: Yeah.
EC: For Oklahoma Watch?
JH: Yes.
EC: Can you tell us about the first one?
JH: Yeah. So this came in as as a tip, just a spontaneous tip. A family of a man who is an elderly Vietnam vet who had a couple of strokes and been left a quadriplegic.
He had been taken by Saint Francis for lack of a better term. And they had not seen him in quite a while. His family had been caring for him, and they had already wound up in a kind of fight with Saint Francis and with Adult Protective Services, the Department of Human Services of Oklahoma. And they wound up not knowing where their loved one, their father was. So I was mainly communicating with these two sisters and they reached out to me because they had nowhere else to turn.
They had tried the usual sources that you're supposed to go to with these kinds of complaints when something happens, and nothing was really working.
EC: Can you name names? What sources had they tried?
JH: Well, they tried Adult Protective Services. They tried the health department.
They were calling around. They were talking to attorneys and they called the police even when when Saint Francis sort of refused to let them on the grounds of the hospital. There had been previous complaints about whether they were taking proper care of of their father. His name was Leroy Theodore. He was a Vietnam veteran.
But those complaints had been investigated and they had been found to not be substantiated. Nevertheless, the next time that Mister Theodore, as a result of difficulty breathing, was taken to Saint Francis, they attempted to initiate an effort to get guardianship or to take guardianship away. In that case, there was dueling guardianships because the family won a guardianship order out of Creek County and then the hospital won a guardianship order out of Tulsa County. So there was a bit of a standoff. And all this time, they didn't know where Mister Theodore was.
In our coverage, we eventually did learn that they sent him to a nursing home in in Midwest City. We went out there, and there was a confrontation with police that I documented in the first of the two stories I've written about all of this.
EC: And to be clear, Midwest City is not near Tulsa. Is it?
JH: Exactly.
That was part of the issue is that they now suddenly had to drive two, two and a half hours just to see their loved one.
EC: And how did you find out that he was there?
JH: Eventually, the standoff over the dueling guardianships resulted in court filings that the family had access to, which indicated where he was. They didn't volunteer that. You know, I have to say both Saint Francis and Adult Protective Services and the Department of Human Services have been just an absolute stone wall.
They have refused to talk, refused to comment. And, it has been very, very difficult to find out anything. Oklahoma law on guardianship is very, very strict compared to other states. And so even though in other states, a whole plague of these kinds of guardianship seizures for financial gain on behalf of hospitals and nursing homes are happening all across the country, in Nevada and in New York. It's much harder to document in Oklahoma because the laws are the way they are and because, hospitals and administrators will hide behind the HIPAA laws, which are in place to protect patients, but can be used to mask the unsavory behavior of administrators and actors who don't have their patients’ interests at heart.
EC: Is he still there?
JH: Yeah. I believe he's still at this at this nursing home in in Midwest City, and the battle is ongoing. You know, we published that story a couple of months ago now, and there's been one since. But their fight for their their father is ongoing.
EC: Okay. I wanna get to the why, but let's talk about the second story first, which is very similar. Right? Was the second story a result of the first one?
JH: You know, a couple more stories have come about and more since since that second story has been published. In the second case, it was prior to Mister Theodore. That case was happening sort of in the last couple of months. The case I heard about second was one that happened back in 2021, and that was also a man who had served during the Vietnam War.
He was an Alzheimer's patient, and he was taken to Saint Francis. And they immediately sent him to Laureate, the attached psychiatric facility. We'd heard from an unnamed source inside of Saint Francis for the first story that this is something that Saint Francis is doing, that they're sending people to Laureate to hide them. That is what our unnamed source, we know who that person is, but we haven't named them. They don't want to be named.
But, what they are saying is that this has happened as many as 15 times. And it appeared that this case, a man named Ken Donley, had been perhaps one of those cases. It was a pair of sisters, his daughters, Donna and Diana Donley, who reached out and wanted to tell the story about how their father was sent to Laureate and then kinda kicked out when they fought back because they already had medical power of attorney.
And what happened with Mister Donley was tragic because they, without fanfare, kicked him out of Laureate back to the hospital where he promptly had a stroke. And then he had to go into a nursing home that was also found to be inadequate as a result of Donna Donley’s complaint to the health department.
And then eventually, he did come home, but he died a couple of months later. The Donley daughters were left feeling that pretty much Saint Francis had killed their father. They're not making a legal accusation in that regard, but, they they definitely feel like this action of taking Mister Donley and putting him in Laureate was a trauma. They actually documented and showed me pictures. When he came out, he had marks on his wrists and his ankles that looked to have been caused by straps that were being used to detain him while he was at Laureate.
EC: And it was inappropriate. He didn't have any psychiatric conditions or?
JH: Yeah. Alzheimer's is not a psychiatric condition. And yet they sent him to a psychiatric facility. And again, Saint Francis they are not talking about.
EC: They won't give you any reason.
JH: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, U.S. News just named Saint Francis the best hospital in in Oklahoma, but, you know, on the ground here, there are are many, many people who have expressed concerns, about this and other kinds of issues there. And they've done it multiple times to multiple people.
EC: That’s what your source is telling you.
JH: Yeah. Right.
EC: So now, why? What they're getting is money for taking care of these, taking care in quotes, of these folks?
JH: The same source told us about mysterious changes that are afoot at Saint Francis about employees and doctors who are leaving en masse because they've been asked to do things they're not comfortable doing. Again, these are the charges that are leveled by this unnamed source. But it seems like things are are afoot there.
Laureate, the psychiatric facility, just recently announced, an expansion from 45 beds to 60 beds. I've been out there. You can see the construction happening. You do have to wonder, well, are they are they having money problems? Is there a money crunch that's happening there?
And so in Mister Donley's case even though he was only at Laureate for five days, and it was a failed attempt to seize control of him, they actually filed with the courts to to take him and then had to withdraw it when the daughters fought back. They charged $12,000 for those five days. $10,000 of that was covered by Medicare, which means taxpayers paid for this.
And that's one case. We've heard it's happening a lot of times. In other states, we know it's happening hundreds of times. Reporting from from Richmond and from ProPublica documents hundreds of cases. There are journalists who get on to this kind of a story and just stay on it for years and years and years, and I haven't done that. I've just written two shorter pieces.
But, you know, if you take Mister Donley's case, $10,000 for five days, and you expand that out, you see it can really really add up to a lot of money that the hospital could be making.
And I've spoken to organizations that that combat guardianship abuse across the country. And they've pointed out that the legal system, attorneys and judges too possibly, could be financially incentivized to perpetuate a system that sees vulnerable adults being seized for nefarious purposes. So it's not just the hospital.
EC: It could be a network.
JH: Yeah. I mean, it is a systemic issue, and lots of different players have a financial incentive. I think it's also worth pointing out that this is probably gonna get worse. Our own source said another one of these these seizures happened as recently as July 10, just a few weeks ago.
And we know nothing about that individual or what happened. The truth is is that the population is aging. There's just been stories written about how in in a few years time, the number of people 65 in Oklahoma is going to outnumber children. So the potential for these kinds of abuses is only gonna grow over time.
EC: And we should probably mention Saint Francis as a nonprofit health care system. Right?
JH: don't know that that exonerates them from anything. You would think as a nonprofit that they would be more willing to talk about what they're doing. But once again, they have just been absolutely close mouthed. They're not talking about it.
EC: That was me, KWGS' Elizabeth Caldwell, speaking to Oklahoma Watch reporter JC Hallman about allegations around Saint Francis Hospital seizing elderly patients for financial gain.
Be sure to visit our website, publicradiotulsa.org, and check us out on social media. This is 89.5 KWGS, KWGS news.
