The CEO at an Arizona healthcare facility where a patient in a vegetative state gave birth has resigned amid an investigation into the apparent rape of the patient.
AZCentral.com reports that Hacienda HealthCare CEO Bill Timmons submitted his resignation during an ongoing investigation following an incident in which a female patient who had been in a vegetative state for over a decade gave birth to a baby girl.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, employees at the nursing facility were reportedly unaware that the patient had become pregnant until she went into labor and gave birth in late December. The The Arizona Department of Health Services has reportedly sent inspectors to the facility to check on the safety of patients, and Hacienda HealthCare has implemented a policy that prevents male staffers from attending to female patients without a female staffer present.
The statement announcing Timmons’s resignation quotes Hacienda HealthCare board member Gary Orman as saying that the nursing facility will accept “nothing less than a full accounting of this absolutely horrifying situation, an unprecedented case that has devastated everyone involved, from the victim and her family to Hacienda staff at every level of our organization.”
No suspects have been identified in the investigation and there are no reports that any employees have been suspended or fired since the discovery of the patient’s pregnancy.
In 2013, a male staffer at Hacienda HealthCare was fired following complaints that he made sexually suggestive remarks to patients. In another case, the facility was investigated after multiple patients complained that staffer walked in on them while they were showering.
It is not known if the patient who gave birth is still at the facility or if she has been transferred elsewhere.