The new leader of the much-criticized Oregon State Hospital told a legislative committee on Wednesday
that he's confident about fixing flaws at the 127-year-old mental institution in Salem.
"I can assure all of you, all of the problems that exist at Oregon State Hospital are resolvable," Greg Roberts
told the House Interim Committee on Human Services. His upbeat message prompted one legislator to express
frustration about broken past promises to turn around the troubled hospital.
Rep. Ron Maurer, R-Grants Pass, said Oregonians are fed up with the hospital's woes, which have been
documented by a series of critical reports and investigations. "It is, quite frankly, a disaster," he said.
Drawing a comparison between Oregon's main mental hospital and the infamous insurance company AIG, Maurer
said OSH "is not too big to fail."
At some point, he said, "If it doesn't work, we just close it down and do something new."
After the committee meeting, Maurer told the Statesman Journal that he thinks legislative discussions about closing the hospital should occur if serious problems persist.
"At some point, someone has to bring that up," he said. "Has anybody ever suggested it? We don't have to have an Oregon State Hospital."
Asked whether closure talks are warranted now, Maurer said: "No, I'm going to give Mr. Roberts the chance to make the changes."
Roberts, 59, took the reins of the embattled hospital Monday. "Today is my third day. Everybody seems happy I came back yesterday
and today," Roberts told the legislative committee, drawing laughs.
Roberts formerly was the director of the Office of State Hospital Management in New Jersey. Before taking the state
hospital job here, he spent his entire 37-year professional career in New Jersey, including stints as chief executive
officer at five state psychiatric hospitals. In his Wednesday remarks to the legislative panel, Roberts said he
successfully dealt with many of the problems now plaguing OSH during his tenure in New Jersey. He said his initial
efforts to turn around the crowded, underperforming hospital in Salem will focus on prioritizing problems that need
fixing. He also wants to make sure the hospital sticks with its primary mission providing treatment that helps
mentally ill patients recover and return to Oregon communities as soon as possible.
ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE
Oregon's forgotten hospital
Updated Apr 3, 2013; Posted Apr 3, 2013
https://www.oregonlive.com/editors/2013/04/oregons_forgotten_hospital.html
Published: January 9, 2005
A room stacked with the unclaimed remains of patients symbolizes what's wrong with the Oregon State Hospital. Eva York died in a bathtub in 1896 at the Oregon Asylum for the Insane. After an inquest,
which absolved the hospital staff of any blame, no one claimed her corpse, so she was buried in the asylum cemetery and forgotten.
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ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE
Oregon's forgotten hospital
Updated Apr 3, 2013; Posted Apr 3, 2013
https://www.oregonlive.com/editors/2013/04/oregons_forgotten_hospital.html
Published: January 9, 2005
Eighteen years later Eva's remains were exhumed, cremated, placed in a copper urn and forgotten all over again. Today the corroding canister containing her ashes sits on a plain pine shelf in what's called the "
Cremains Room" at the 122-year-old Salem institution, now known as the Oregon State Hospital. Eva York is one of about 5,000 patients whose cremains are neatly stacked in that stark, lonely room like cans of paint
in a well-stocked hardware store. Her story one of the rare stories that can be told, thanks to the inquest into her death makes her a perfect symbol for what's wrong with the way Oregonians treat some of the
most frail among us. The 2005 Legislature, which convenes Monday, must address this shameful truth.
The state hospital was a dumping ground in Eva's day, and to some extent it still is today. Even its administrators admit they're housing patients who don't belong there. Wards are overcrowded. Staffing is inadequate.
Patients whose psychoses have been stabilized by medication are being warehoused in the hospital for lack of smaller community-based mental health centers that would be far better for them.
These editorials were published between January and September of 2005. They won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. The grim, sprawling hospital is no place for juveniles, yet Oregon houses about a dozen
frightened, troubled kids there. Some of the girls, often prior victims of sexual abuse, pull their mattresses out into hallways to sleep in safe view of staff. During the day, adolescents pass time outdoors in plain view,
through concertina and barbed wire, of maximum-security adult patients
These kids are left there, however, because Oregon has no proper facility for them. There's really nowhere else they can go. Out of sight, out of mind. It's an age-old story of neglect for Oregon's most unfortunate. In fact,
it was Eva York's story more than a century ago. Today we know far more about Eva than any of her forgotten companions in the Cremains Room. That's because her death led to a story in Salem's Daily Capital Journal on Nov. 25, 1896
Eva was a 36-year-old Marion County woman who probably wasn't even mentally ill. According to the old newspaper clipping, she was an epileptic, confined to the hospital's asylum-era epileptic ward five years
before her death. In those days her malady, like depression and alcoholism, was viewed as akin to insanity. Eva died between 2 and 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, "bath day" in the epileptic ward. While left unattended in a tub,
she had a seizure and died from it, a coroner ruled. He found no evidence of drowning. An inquest jury declared the hospital to be "in no way responsible."
The news account went on to say the hospital telegraphed word of Eva's death to "a brother residing near Hubbard." Her remains, however, were never claimed.
The entire asylum cemetery was exhumed in 1913-14 when the state decided it needed the land. Many of the headstones were unceremoniously dumped on a nearby hilltop. All unclaimed remains,
including Eva's, were cremated and stored in a basement. By 1976 that bleak collection of urns exceeded 5,000. That year, in a long overdue act of respect, they were placed underground in a modest memorial
on the hospital grounds. But water seeped into the vaults, damaging the copper containers and destroying most of their paper labels. A few years ago, the cash-strapped institution unearthed the urns and
stashed them in the Cremains Room, next to the incinerator where all the patients had been cremated.
If Eva York is a symbol of Oregon neglect, the hospital itself its physical hulk is a full-blown metaphor. The tub that she died in is still there, gathering mold and rat droppings in an abandoned wing that's creepier
than any haunted house one might imagine. Occupied spaces of the hospital are cheerier only by comparison. They comprise a foreboding, ramshackle collection of additions to the original 1883 structure along
with several decrepit satellite buildings, the newest of which is more than a half-century old.
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ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE
Oregon's forgotten hospital
Updated Apr 3, 2013; Posted Apr 3, 2013
https://www.oregonlive.com/editors/2013/04/oregons_forgotten_hospital.html
Published: January 9, 2005
Patients spend their hours locked in jam-packed day rooms connected by long, dreary corridors to their prisonlike sleeping quarters, crammed with more bodies than they were designed for. They gaze out windows c
overed with oppressive security screens, and they stare at visitors coming and going on balky, creaky old elevators. No wonder the makers of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the Oscar-winning movie
based on Ken Kesey's novel, chose to film it at the Oregon State Hospital. It was a fright 30 years ago, and the place still looks the same today.
Unlike the cinematic "Cuckoo's Nest" villains, however, the administrators and staff at today's Oregon State Hospital aren't the bad guys. They're pretty much doing the best they can with deplorable resources
provided by a state with a long history of giving short shrift to its mentally ill. Those running the institution, in fact, say they want change. They also voice support for a fledgling movement in the Legislature to create that change.
One man Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem lit the flame. Fed up with the state pouring money and crowding patients into the hospital, he engineered a $467,000 emergency appropriation last month to start a process that ought
to lead to replacement of Oregon's disgraceful relic.
That emergency money will pay for stopgap measures to relieve overcrowding. It also will launch work on a master plan that will give lawmakers a blueprint for a new, more humane way of caring for these patients.
On Monday, when the 2005 Oregon Legislature convenes, all 90 members should mark May 16 on their desk calendars. That's the deadline for presentation of this blueprint. It will likely call for a years-long project requiring tens of
millions of dollars to build a smaller, modern hospital and an enlarged network of community mental health centers that would be less costly to operate and more effective at treating patients. Every legislator must commit right now to
moving Oregon mental health care out of the dark shadows of its 19th-century roots. And while they're at it, they should spend some money on a suitably dignified memorial for the earthly remains of Eva York and her fellow lost
souls in the Cremains Room.
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