After much anticipation, ECMC opened its new Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program (CPEP) facilities in January 2014.  Upon hearing this news, I was hopeful that they had reformed the facility from when I had been there in 2012.  However, when I voluntarily admitted myself to the facility I experienced and witnessed patient abuse and neglect. I was lied to about how long I would be kept there before seeing a doctor, and whether I would receive a change in my medication -- the reason I went to CPEP in the first place.  Some of the employees and nurses at the facility were kind and supportive but many were cold or even cruel and verbally abusive.  What was supposed to take five hours turned into a nineteen hour ordeal in an overly crowded, poorly run facility.  Medications were not properly and efficiently distributed, nurses were often inattentive to patients' needs or to signs that they were entering crisis, and there were not even enough beds for all the patients on hand.  Some slept on the floor, with no mattress.  It was a dehumanizing experience, an opinon shared by all the people I spoke with.

Considering that CPEP is the only facility of its kind available to the greater Buffalo area, it should be held under heavier scrutiny.  I want ECMC to more efficiently care for and manage their patients and better vet and monitor  their employees.  ECMC's CPEP facility is part of a disturbing national trend of neglect and abuse dealt to patients suffering from behavioral health problems.

As ECMC does not provide any email addresses publicly, if you would like to directly contact them about your feelings on this matter, please use the following link: http://www.ecmc.edu/contact/