By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — An advocacy group for the disabled called on Gov. Mike Beebe today to close the Booneville Human Development Center because of inadequate patient care, including the recent death of a resident who choked on a sandwich.

The 22-year-old man with a documented history of choking on food died after center staff failed to provide the one-on-one supervision prescribed by doctors, Dana McClain, attorney for the Disability Rights Center, said during a news conference at the state Capitol.

“The continued violation of people with developmental disabilities civil and legal rights and Arkansas’ failure to develop true alternatives to institutionalization is what bring (us) here today,” McClain said.

Beebe said later that anytime the state discovers deficiencies at the centers they are corrected, and that he supports giving people the choice of sending their loved ones to institutions or to community-based programs.

“I believe in choices so that families can make the decision as to whether the institutional care is in the best interests of their loved ones or whether the community-based services are in their best interests,” Beebe told the Arkansas News Bureau. “I support community-based services, smaller options, more local options, but I also support, where it’s appropriate for the best interests of the patient, the facilities.”

McClain said the state has found repeated violations by employees at the Booneville center in Logan County in recent years. The center provides care for 143 adult residents.

In 2009, center nursing staff failed to properly administer a resident’s medication, despite warnings. The resident was overdosed and suffered a variety of problems, including permanent renal damage.

Two years earlier, a resident died after becoming wedged in a window at the center, McClain said.

In the past three years, McClain said, the state Department of Human Services and the Office of Long Term Care have issued numerous deficiency survey reports documenting failures to provide safe and adequate treatment of residents at the facility.

In early May, the U.S. Justice Department sued the state, alleging the six centers it operates that care for the developmentally disabled are needlessly institutionalizing people in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Also last month, the governor recommended closing the Alexander Human Development Center because of problems with the physical plant, staffing and other deficiencies at the center.

Also, a report to the governor from the Office of Long Term Care detailed mistakes center staff made in handling a patient’s rape allegations against a staff member — mistakes the governor said contributed to his decision to end the center’s Medicaid certification.

Beebe said today that the state is currently “doing a review of all the facilities.”

“We made a decision that Alexander should be closed. While we review all of them, that’s the only one currently that I plan to close,” he said.

“Any time there’s deficiencies, we try to look to correct them,” the governor said. “Nobody wants to stop deficiencies any more than I do. Obviously that employee (in the fatal choking incident) I think has been fired.

“If you’re asking whether or not you close a whole facility because you had a situation like that, the answer is in my opinion you don’t close a whole facility because of that, but you take whatever steps are necessary to try to prevent anything like that from ever happening. It’s obviously a tragic event.”

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Reporter John Lyon contributed to this report.