Name change approved for Fayetteville Youth Psychiatric Facility with Verified History

A state board on Wednesday approved a name change for a northwest Arkansas children’s mental health treatment center that has a history of regulatory violations, including forced sex between residents, dilapidated buildings and an employee sharing content explicitly with a male minor.

Piney Ridge Treatment Center in Fayettevillea 102-bed psychiatric residential treatment facility owned by Acadia Healthcare, will change its name to Behavioral health of yellow rock. The Child Protection Agency Review Boardone of several state entities that authorize and regulate psychiatric residential treatment facilities, or PRTFs, approved the name change during its meeting Wednesday at Arkansas Department of Human Services.

Piney Ridge specializes in the treatment of minors experiencing behavioral health issues and trauma, including sexual abuse. Several cases of sexual misconduct and facility-related violations occurred in 2019. In August, the facility was in the news again after an employee was arrested for showing a minor male resident nude images and videos of she proposed to have sex.

Piney Ridge is one of 13 psychiatric residential treatment facilities in Arkansas and one of three owned by Acadia Healthcarea publicly traded company with mental health centers in the United States. The Arkansas Times published the first installment in a series of investigations into these treatment centers in October.

During Wednesday’s board meeting, Matt Wiltshirean Acadia executive who oversees its facilities in Arkansas said the name change was necessary because of confusion with a similarly named treatment center in Missouri.

“There’s Piney Ridge in Missouri and a lot of times we get their advertising and vice versa,” Wiltshire told the board.

Documents and emails obtained by Arkansas Times show Acadia has expansion plans for all of its treatment facilities in Arkansas, which include Millcreek Behavioral Health in Fordyce and Little Creek Behavioral Health in Conway. In addition to the name change, Piney Ridge will move to a new facility under construction in Springdale.

During the board meeting, staff from DHS, which also has oversight of the treatment centers, informed Wiltshire that Little Creek would be placed on a “corrective action agreement” after nearly a dozen calls were made from the facility to the Arkansas State Police for child abuse. The hot line. It is not clear over what period of time the calls were made or the nature of the calls, but DHS said three of the calls were “substantiated” incidents of abuse.

A corrective action agreement involves increased monitoring by DHS and the implementation of a plan to resolve any regulatory issues.

About half of the children in Arkansas PRTFs are from other states, and Little Creek stands out as an extreme example. Little Creek does not accept Arkansas Medicaid and only accepts out-of-state children for its treatment program, which focuses on children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Wiltshire, the Acadia executive, said the meeting was the first time he had been made aware of the problems.

“Honestly, I didn’t get anything about why I was asked to come here,” he said. “I assumed it was related to an investigation, but I haven’t heard anything about it or anything from the state of Arkansas.”

DHS also announced that oversight of residential psychiatric treatment facilities would be streamlined under a single branch of the agency, Supplier Services and Quality Assurance Division. Previously, oversight within DHS was split between that division and the agency’s Residential Placement and Clearance Unit. DHS also contracts with a third party to conduct monitoring.

The confusing regulatory maze has long been frustrating for treatment center operators. Guard dog groups like Arkansas Disability Rightsan organization that is federally mandated to monitor PRTFs, argued that the regulatory structure leads to inefficient and ineffective efforts not only to pursue violations at facilities, but also to hold them accountable in any meaningful way.

The Licensing Unit is now transitioning to the Supplier Services and Quality Assurance Division.

“This will bring all oversight of PRTFs under one division,” Martina Smithsaid the director of the Supplier Services and Quality Assurance Division. “We hope (it will result in) positive experiences for our providers in that all licensing and surveys and inspections will be under one division here at DHS.”