Two Alaska families allege their children were sexually abused at the Anchorage, Alaska-based North Star Hospital after inadequate staff supervision, the Anchorage Daily News reported Oct. 11.
In both cases, the victims were allegedly targeted by other patients who cornered them while they were alone, the report said. One of the families received mail from North Star showing a $62,000 charge for their child's three-week hospitalization.
The hospital system is owned by King of Prussia, Pa.-based behavioral health giant Universal Health Services, which owns hundreds of hospitals and claims annual revenues of $11 billion per year.
North Star is one of the only places to offer hospital-level psychiatric care for adolescents in Alaska, and the only to offer acute inpatient care for kids under 13, the report said. Most of its patients are kids in the foster care system, though neither of the two children in question were in state custody.
The state of Alaska's Denali KidCare program has paid the state's three North Star campuses a total of $122 million in reimbursements for care over the past five fiscal years, the report said. The hospitals admit children as young as four and as old as 18.
The hospital has recently failed federal inspections for escapes, patient-on-patient assaults and excessive use of locked "seclusion rooms," among other issues.