DOJ says patients at risk in Georgia mental hospitals

SHANNON McCAFFREY, Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA - Federal officials said Friday they are taking action to protect people in seven Georgia psychiatric hospitals from harm to their lives, health and safety.

The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division filed a motion late Thursday seeking the appointment of a monitor who will set binding targets and timetables to reduce the number of residents in the hospitals. The motion also seeks an expansion of community-based outpatient care for the state's psychiatric patients.

Care at Georgia's mental health facilities has been the target of federal scrutiny for several years now.

Georgia and the Justice Department last year entered an agreement over care at the state-run hospitals. Georgia agreed to improve suicide risk assessment and find ways to prevent patient assaults on other patients within a year.

The Justice Department says it has been monitoring conditions in the hospitals and finds that they remain unsafe.

A spokesman for Gov. Sonny Perdue disputed that Friday, saying the state has made huge strides in improving care at its psychiatric facilities.

Bert Brantley said the state has set up a new department to supervise behavioral health care in Georgia. The governor is also proposing an additional $70 million in funding for mental health over the next two fiscal years, the only state agency to see its funding rise during Georgia's budget crunch.

The state also said it would stop offering care for adult mental health patients at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, where some of the worst cases of abuse had been reported. In November, federal officials found so many shortcomings at Central State, with patients attacking one another and receiving poor treatment, that state officials announced the facility would no longer accept new patients.

Brantley said Friday the Obama administration has suddenly "changed the rules of the game" by now requiring that state expand outpatient community services.

"They have been saying fix the hospitals, fix the hospitals, so that's what we've been doing," Brantley said. "We're making progress to the goal line here but they keep changing where the goal is."

Brantley said even before the new Justice Department filing the state had asked for a status conference with the federal judge overseeing the case to offer a report on improvements in the system. No date has been set yet.

According to the Justice Department, patients confined in Georgia's mental hospital are still exposed to "egregious harm."

- In 2009, the state failed to properly supervise someone who had previously killed. That individual assaulted and killed another individual in the hospital.

- In 2008, hospital staff failed to intervene in a fight. One person involved in the fight was knocked unconscious and died a few days later from blunt force trauma to the head.

- In 2009, staff failed to supervise an individual who went on to rape someone.

- In 2009, an individual committed suicide by tipping his bed up and hanging himself from it. Justice Department experts have repeatedly warned hospital staff that these beds should be bolted to the floor.

- Just this month the state failed to adequately supervise an individual who expressed suicidal thoughts. The next day she committed suicide.

The seven hospitals are: East Central Regional Hospital, Georgia Regional Hospitals at Savannah and Atlanta, Southwestern State Hospital, Central State Hospital, West Central Georgia Regional Hospital and Northwest Georgia Hospital.

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