AUGUSTA — The Legislature’s nonpartisan watchdog organization will join a list of entities investigating problems at the beleaguered Riverview Psychiatric Center but will limit the scope of its probe for now, according to a directive from lawmakers on Wednesday.
The Government Oversight Committee unanimously tasked the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability to focus its probe of Riverview on systems that involve the reporting of problems within the state-run hospital and the subsequent responses. Specifically, OPEGA will explore whether protocols already in place are adequate and whether data systems that could identify problems are reliable.
Scrutiny of the Augusta hospital has been intense since September 2013 when it lost its certification from the federal Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, which in the long run could eliminate $20 million in annual federal funding if legal challenges by the state are unsuccessful.
The decertification was due to a range of issues, the most serious of which involved the use of tasers and restraints on patients. Riverview, one of the state’s foremost institutions for patients who need long-term psychiatric care, houses both civilian patients and those referred for treatment by the Department of Corrections and judicial system. Many of the latter group are people involved in violent crimes but found not responsible because of mental illness.
In addition to a series of surprise audits by CMS, entities investigating problems at the hospital include the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees it, the Maine Attorney General’s Office, and perhaps most notably former Maine Supreme Court Chief Justice Daniel Wathen, who is responsible for overseeing the AMHI Consent Decree. That document resulted from a 1990 class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of former Augusta Mental health Institute patients after poor conditions and overcrowding resulted in several deaths. The consent decree required the state to establish and maintain a comprehensive mental health system.
Wathen told the Bangor Daily News last month that he would conduct his next audit of Riverview in early October. As courtmaster for the Consent Decree, Wathen has the authority to recommend fixes that DHHS must either adopt or go to court over.
Members of the Government Oversight Committee, some of whom have said they have continued to receive reports from past and present employees about the mistreatment of patients, said they were concerned that launching a full OPEGA audit would be redundant given the other ongoing investigations and could needlessly consume too much of Riverview officials’ time.
“I think we should be very careful that we don’t get into duplication [of efforts] and actually be a hindrance to the ongoing process,” said Rep. David Cotta, R-China, a member of the Government Oversight Committee. “I think there are a lot of people involved right now.”
Sen. Roger Katz, R-Augusta, said that though the situation at Riverview is seen to be improving in recent months, he’s received complaints from employees numbering in the “double digits” about ongoing or new problems at Riverview.
“I think we’ve got a role in trying to sort that out,” Katz said.
Sen. Christopher Johnson, D-Somerville, said there are enough concerns to be evaluated to make fixing Riverview a priority for state government.
“This needs to be gotten to the bottom of,” Johnson said.
OPEGA Director Beth Ashcroft recommended that her office monitor the other investigations and look for areas that need more attention as they progress.
“The more appropriate stance would be for us to continue to take in information from those other efforts and try to determine what our normal review process would be,” she said.
DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew told the Bangor Daily News last month that the list of outstanding problems at Riverview, at least from the point of view of CMS, has dwindled to relatively minor issues that by themselves probably wouldn’t be cause for decertification. She said at the time that she was hopeful that CMS auditors would revisit the hospital by the end of September, though the state has no control over when those surprise audits happen.
DHHS spokesman John Martins said Wednesday that the auditors have not yet returned to Riverview.
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