TAUNTON — Nine weeks after two people in Taunton were stabbed to death and two others wounded, an investigation has absolved the state's psychiatric, hospital-service program and Morton Hospital of any deficiency for discharging the killer — hours before he embarked on his murderous rampage.But a statement from Morton Hospital's parent company, Boston-based Steward Health Care System, says the state's investigation could have been avoided — if all of the MassHealth clinical psychiatrists previously assigned to Morton had been eligible to be "credentialed" by the Taunton hospital.
The investigation's conclusions "were the result of the state's practice of providing uncredentialed practitioners to Morton Hospital's emergency department," a statement issued by Steward spokesman Jeff Hall stated.
Two days after the May 10 killing spree by 28-year-old Arthur DaRosa, Steward announced it had cut ties with Norton Emergency Services — one of four Emergency Services Programs operated by the state's Department of Mental Health (DPH), the latter of which is an agency within the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
The state's report says nine of 10 Norton ESP team clinicians are licensed, but does not indicate how many of them have achieved the ranking of a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) — which requires either a doctoral or master's degree in social work, in addition to thousands of hours of field experience.
