The court master assigned to monitor operations at the Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta says the state hospital must hire additional personnel to comply with staffing ratios established as part of a 1990 agreement prompted by a class-action lawsuit.
Former Maine Supreme Court Chief Justice Daniel Wathen recommends that the hospital abandon its practice of using skilled specialists as entry-level mental health workers in an attempt to relieve staffing shortages.
Not only does Wathen want officials at the state Department of Health and Human Services to boost staffing at the Riverview Psychiatric Center, he wants them to do it soon.
“On or before April 4th,” Wathan says. “I believe that the time frame I’ve suggested may not be exactly the dates that the hospital had planned on doing it – I’ve tried to present dates that are acceptable to them.”
In an order filed in Kennebec County Superior Court, Wathen says Riverview must take steps to confront the persistent staffing shortages that helped convince the federal government to terminate the hospital’s Medicaid accreditation. Loss of accreditation has jeopardized more than $20 million in federal funding.
The hospital, Wathen says, has been attempting to address its staffing needs on an acuity-based need, rather than a unit-based need, as a way to rely on fewer personnel. Additionally, Wathen said Riverview must stop using specially trained staff in functions that would be more appropriately filled by regular line mental health workers.
But he says resolving the hospital’s nursing shortage is his primary compliance goal.
“The nursing shortage is the most critical one, since there are approximately 20-plus nursing vacancies out of a total of like 85, so that’s a pretty serious shortage,” Wathen says.
“Resolving these staffing issues and really understanding what needs to be done to get that facility fully staffed, I think is the most important thing to get into a place where the patients are in a more therapeutic environment and where the staff and the patients are safe,” says Rep. Drew Gattine, House chair of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee.
Gattine has been grappling with the noncompliance issues surrounding Riverview for the last three years. The Westbrook Democrat says Wathen’s recommended staffing goals mirror the concerns of his committee.
Gattine says the report itself now becomes part of the larger court record on Riverview that stretches back to 1990 with the old AMHI consent decree that was prompted by a class-action suit over patient care.
“I think that this report is basically something that is presented to the court,” Gattine says. “I don’t know what the process is for being ratified or appealed but I hope that the department will look at these things very carefully.”
Wathen says the state must either accept the recommendations for Riverview as binding or challenge them in court.
Calls made to the state Department of Health and Human Services were not returned by air time, but DHHS representatives are scheduled to attend an upcoming meeting of the Health and Human Services Committee.