Wellpath spinoff, keeps same staff, same
problems at Bridgewater State Hospital, report finds
By Jason Laughlin Globe Staff, Updated March 12, 2026, 8:48 a.m.
Wellpath spinoff keeps same staff, same problems at Bridgewater 3/12/26, 7:26 PM
TLUMACKI/GLOBE STAFF
Almost two years ago, Massachusetts’ prison system cut most ties with the troubled medical provider Wellpath amid reports of rampant inmate mistreatment.
The state Department of Corrections kept a spinoff of the company, Recovery
Solutions, around, paying $92 million this year to operate Bridgewater State
Hospital, the DOC’s mental health care facility. Despite a name change, the personnel stayed the same, and so have the problems, according to a new report from the Disability Law Center, a Boston-based advocacy organization responsible for oversight of Bridgewater.
Those problems include a heavy reliance on locking patients alone in
their cells and forcibly sedating patients, which the report’s authors say breaches state law. “It’s incredibly troubling ... that we’re not seeing meaningful changes,” said Tatum Pritchard, the DLC’s director of litigation.
The persistent problems are a reason state Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, a Newton Democrat, is sponsoring a bill to transfer control of Bridgewater to the Department of Mental Health. Bridgewater, which is not an accredited hospital, is the nation’s only forensic health crisis were placed “at serious risk of harm” by the DOC and Wellpath. More than a decade ago, Bridgewater faced legal action over its practices of physical restraints and seclusion.
Wellpath, owned by the private equity firm HIG. Capital, declared bankruptcy in
November 2024, as it faced $644 million in debt and more than 1,500 lawsuits,
according to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. The company reached a
settlement with vendors and people affected by Wellpath’s care for $15.5 million in
April. A court-approved separation created Recovery Solutions as a standalone entity in January 2025. The report ( see below), released last week, is the latest in the DLC’s series of biannual reports on conditions at Bridgewater, and it shows little improvement in the conditions and treatment between Wellpath and Recovery Solutions’ operation of the facility.
The report describes nearly 250 men with serious mental health conditions living in a crumbling, filthy facility where excessive use of restraints and violence against residents occurs regularly. Recovery Solutions did not respond to a call for comment, but according to the DLC report the facility’s medical executive director attributed instances of seclusion and restraint, both chemical and physical, to the challenges of Bridgewater’s population.
The Department of Corrections said in a statement Wednesday that it is reviewing the report but noted it subjects Recovery Solutions to quality control and training
requirements. The department reported adding an additional administrator to oversee health services and hired a mental health expert who has served in the state DMH to review practices at Bridgewater.
Spokesperson Lindsay Corcoran said in a statement that DOC “remains deeply
committed to delivering high-quality, trauma-informed care to patients with complex needs who require court-ordered involuntary inpatient psychiatric hospitalization in a secure setting.” Most of Bridgewater’s residents are either awaiting trial or civilly committed, typically after being found not competent to stand trial or not guilty for reasons of mental illness. They are so-called forensic patients, people in the criminal justice system with serious mental health conditions, and they often require the intensive care of a psychiatric hospital, and in some cases the security precautions of a prison. The DLC report reviewed incidents from June to December 2025.
On 299 occasions during that six month period, staff used forced medication to
restrain residents in an emergency situation, the report found, a 62 percent increase over the previous six months. It’s also a 29 percent increase compared to the same period in 2023, when Wellpath oversaw care at Bridgewater and the facility’s population was larger. The circumstances didn’t always meet the legal standards that warranted medication restraint, both reports stated.
Massachusetts law permits patients with mental illness to be restrained only in the
midst of emergency circumstances, including threats or incidences of extreme violence or self-harm. Yet the report documented instances of patients forcibly sedated without signs they were, at the moment, a risk to themselves or others. In one instance, staff rushed into the cell of a patient who had been secluded in his cell and slammed him against a window, then pushed him onto the bed, where two nurses injected him with medication. The patient, identified as Nigel, spent the prior 90 minutes in his cell talking to staff, pacing, reading, and lying in bed.
A record of the incident stated that Nigel had to be held down for safe administration of medication. “It’s troubling because it’s so unnecessary, but also because it violates the law, Pritchard said. DOC’s own policies shouldn’t permit such use of forced medication, but Pritchard said there is no sign that DOC is conducting any meaningful oversight of Recovery Solutions’ practices. DOC disputed that, reporting staff conduct independent, random reviews of incidents at the facility. The report also raised concerns about an October suicide attempt.
A patient identified as Quincy hanged himself with a bed sheet from the frame of a metal gate. It took staff a minute and a half to show up. When two workers arrived, they called for help but Quincy wasn’t taken down for another 30 seconds.
Quincy wasn’t injured in the attempt. The door frame should never have been left in the hallway, the DLC report concluded. Staff who might have been able to see the suicide attempt didn’t because of obstacles blocking a break room window. The hallway was also under video monitoring, yet no staff member saw Quincy roll a wheelchair toward the gate, stand on it, and tie a sheet to the frame and his neck. The obstacles in the break room were removed, but it took 16 days, the report stated.
Staff are now posted in that unit with better visibility of the corridor. The DLC has conducted oversight at Bridgewater since 2014, and has long advocated for a shift to DMH oversight, granting patients standards and therapeutic oversight not available under DOC, the report stated. A spokesperson for DMH said the department would review relevant legislation that reached the governor’s desk. Pritchard noted that there are few companies nationally with the capacity or expertise to provide care for a facility like Bridgewater, leaving the state with few alternatives to Recovery Solutions. Giving Bridgewater to the mental health department isn’t a new idea, but proposals haven’t made it out of the State House. Creem, the state senator, hopes this year will be different. “If you’re the only state in the nation that allows a correctional agency to handle this,
rather than the Department of Mental Health, that’s a problem,” she said.
Jason Laughlin can be reached at jason.laughlin@globe.com. Follow him @jasmlaughlin.
Find Massachusetts Disability Law Center monitor reports for Bridewater State
Hospital here :
https://www.dlc-ma.org/bridgewater-state-hospital-advocacy/
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