The Oregon State Hospital is allowing visitors back into its facilities starting Monday, but for most patients those visits will only be on a no-contact basis. The hospital shut its doors in May after a patient died from a suspected overdose of fentanyl, which officials believe was smuggled in by a visitor.
Patients currently receiving a “hospital-level of care,” which encompasses all patients at the Salem and Junction City facilities aside from two units, will only be allowed visits with no physical contact.
According to a FAQ document from the hospital, only one visitor will be allowed in at a time. Their belongings will be secured in a locker, and belts and shoes will be screened using an X-ray machine. Visitors will be screened using a metal detector wand, and potentially patted down.
After they’re cleared, “visitors will be escorted to the non-contact visitation area where visitation bays are set up with a clear partition separating visitors and patients. The visitor and patient will communicate through a phone.”
No minors will be allowed to visit during this first stage, the document states.
The state hospital is a secure, inpatient psychiatric facility. It serves patients who’ve “been found by the court to be an imminent danger to themselves or others,” those deemed guilty except for insanity, and so-called “Aid and Assist” patients – “people who have been arrested but are not able to participate in their trial because of a mental illness.”
In her first interview since assuming the top role at the state hospital, Interim Superintendent Dr. Sara Walker said with contraband like fentanyl – which can be difficult to identify and dangerous even in small amounts – “we end up taking some pretty stringent measures to prevent it from coming through the door.
“So that means they don’t get to give their loved one a hug, they don’t get to sit there and have a meal with them,” she said. “And that’s the challenge. On the one hand, we can do a thing that is substantially going to reduce the risk of anything coming in that we don’t want to see come in. There’s always a cost to that.”
Oregon State Hospital officials say they’re reopening visitation in “phases” due to contraband risks, with no-contact being part of the first phase. But advocates say that limiting visitation to no-contact, even for a short amount of time, can be damaging.
“Such a blanket policy really just punishes innocent family members and loved ones who have been engaged in no criminal activity at all,” said Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “So even if it is accurate that in this one particular case that it was actually a family visitor who smuggled in the drugs, that doesn’t justify punishing not only the people who are in the hospital but their children, their family members, their grandparents, everyone from being able to even just hold hands or hug their loved one when they come to visit them.”
Walker noted that it was a “very small” subset of patients engaging in this kind of behavior, but said that “it only takes one.”
Regulators raise questions
The change to visitation comes after officials with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last month delivered a statement of deficiencies to the hospital over a number of issues, including screening visitors and supervising patient visits with family and friends.
According to the report from federal regulators, “Patient 5” had an “in-person visitation with their parent during the evening” on May 23. The following morning, that patient was found unresponsive. As emergency crews attempted to resuscitate them, another patient said “Patient 5 had told them they had received something from their parent during visitation that might be drugs.”
State police seized powder residue next to Patient 5’s bed, the report said.
The federal report puts the hospital in “immediate jeopardy status” where it could lose federal funding, about $37 million per biennium including Medicare reimbursements and additional federal funding, if corrections aren’t made.
Officials at the hospital were required to submit a correction plan by Sept. 2. It’s the third such warning that the facility has received this year; the first came in April, after safety lapses resulted in a choking attack, injuries and a sexual assault. The second came just weeks later in May and was related to incomplete viability checks. Just days later, Patient 5 died, spurring the newest deficiency statement. The August report also found deficiencies related to rounds and viability checks, stating that hospital staff were not consistent in checking to ensure patients were “alive and breathing.”
Walker, who also serves as the medical director of the hospital and was appointed as interim superintendent in late March, acknowledged the serious issues hospital staff have seen this year.
“We’ve had an unusually large number of really serious incidents happen over the past 12 months that we’re not okay with,” Walker said. “And every time something serious like that happens, it is absolutely incumbent upon us to take an internal look, do a deep dive investigation, figure out what happened, what led to it, and what can we do differently to prevent that sort of thing from happening again.”
For now, addressing that will include limiting visitation.
Aliza Kaplan, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, said that while she understands that drugs coming into facilities is a problem, the change to visitation should be “short and reasonable.”
“Anything that is long-term that affects people’s mental health, rehabilitation, connection to the outside world and their loved ones is just so damaging,” she said. “The institutions have all the power here and how they use it really matters.”
