Former patient accuses Clear View of racketeering in lawsuit

JOHNSTOWN — A Windsor man is suing Clear View Behavioral Health for allegedly holding him for more than a week against his will as part of ongoing accusations of severe mismanagement at the hospital.
In a lawsuit filed late last year in Larimer County District Court, Windsor resident Angelo Scolari accuses the Johnstown-based psychiatric hospital of holding him and other patients longer than needed so it could continue to charge Medicare, Medicaid and insurers and charge them for care visits they never provided.

Scolari was sent to Clear View in January 2018 after developing hallucinations and threatening self-harm. He allegedly was held for six days longer than the three-day involuntary hold he was originally placed on, and accuses doctors at the hospital of threatening him with a longer stay if he continued to ask for release. He was billed $14,800 for the stay.
State law forbids health providers from arbitrarily placing patients on involuntary holds or falsifying reports to make a patient appear in more mental distress than they are.
The lawsuit also alleges that a nurse refused to allow a public defender to meet with Scolari in private.
State regulators moved to shut down the facility last year after citing it for 85 different safety violations over the course of 2018 and 2019, which Clear View and Strategic Behavioral Health have broadly denied. A state administrative-law judge is due to rule on the state’s request later this spring.
A spokesperson for Strategic Behavioral Health did not respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon.