A lawsuit over the 2011 death of a patient at the upscale Sierra Tucson treatment facility has been settled out of court.
The lawsuit, filed by the family of Dr. Kenneth Litwack against the private, for-profit Sierra Tucson, “has been resolved and is not going to trial,” Dev Sethi, the Tucson attorney representing the Litwack family, said Thursday morning.
Sethi would not elaborate.
Sierra Tucson’s interim executive director Philip Herschman declined to comment.
In 2011, Litwack, a 71-year-old Orange County physician with anxiety and depression, disappeared from Sierra Tucson. Two weeks later he was found dead near Sierra Tucson’s stable, about a quarter-mile from the main building, in an area off the facility’s footpaths and trails. His body was so decomposed that an autopsy report could not determine how he died.
After Litwack’s death, the state fined Sierra Tucson $9,250 for violations, including failing to appropriately allocate staff to supervise patients. The state also placed the facility on a probationary license.
Litwack’s family filed a lawsuit against Sierra Tucson in 2012, accusing it of improperly supervising patients. The lawsuit contended that, “a drive toward improving profitability at the expense of patient care and safety caused Dr. Litwack’s death.” The case had been scheduled to go to trial in Pinal County Superior Court this month.
The facility, on a 160-acre site at 39580 S. Lago del Oro Parkway along the Pinal/Pima County border, has 124 beds, plus 15 “acute level” beds.
It has programs to help patients with addictions, mood disorders, chronic pain, eating disorders and trauma through its “Sierra Model” of integrating therapies like massage, yoga and acupuncture with traditional psychiatry. Most patients are in their late 30s and early 40s. A majority of patients self-pay at a cost of about $1,300 per day.
The facility was fined again this year over the death of a patient.
On Jan. 2, a Sierra Tucson resident with a history of depression and anxiety hanged himself with a shoelace from a shower head, according to a Pima County autopsy report. He died three days later at Oro Valley Hospital.
The patient was at a “very high” risk for self-harm when he arrived at Sierra Tucson, state records say. On Jan. 1, the patient had told his wife over the phone that he wanted to kill himself, state investigators found. Less than 24 hours later, the woman’s husband was dead.
The state’s report found no evidence of documentation in the patient’s medical record that he was reassessed after he told his wife he wanted to kill himself.
Sierra Tucson agreed to pay the state $2,000 after the investigation into that death, though it did not admit wrongdoing.
The 31-year-old Sierra Tucson has been owned by CRC Health Group, a subsidiary of Boston-based Bain Capital financial services company, since 2006. CRC Health Group bills itself as the largest specialized behavioral-health-care service provider in the U.S., seeing more than 30,000 patients per day at 115 locations. Sierra Tucson is its flagship location.
