Posted on: Saturday, August 7, 2004

State hospital reform near end

By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

State officials are confident that requirements of a court-ordered remedial plan for the Hawai'i State Hospital can be met by the Sept. 30 deadline.

"I'm very optimistic that if we keep doing what we've been doing, the agonizing 13 years of federal court involvement will be coming to a final conclusion," said Dr. Thomas Hester, state Adult Mental Health Division chief.

Federal involvement stems from a 1991 civil suit that exposed problems of crowding, safety, treatment programs, patient health and direction at the hospital. The state was ordered to overhaul the system, but moved slowly.

The appointment of Magistrate Kevin Chang as a special master by federal Judge David Ezra in May of 2001, and Kris McLoughlin as special monitor in February 2002, put the overhaul on a fast track. A three-member evaluation team has been checking every six months on the implementation progress of the Hawai'i State Hospital Remedial Plan for Compliance.

The evaluation team will conduct its sixth and final site visit Sept. 13-17, two weeks before the deadline.

In a progress report filed Thursday in federal court, Chang said conditions and treatment of patients at the State Hospital had "improved dramatically" since 1991. The state appears likely to achieve compliance by Sept. 30, Chang said in the report, based on site visits by the evaluation team during the week of March 15 and again June 14-15.

The report cited the "can do" attitude of state mental heath officials for "continued progress in key areas," but noted "clearly there is more work to be done."

Hester says the hospital staff is feeding off a "tremendous amount of team focus and energy" to meet the deadline.

The evaluation team found progress stalled in development of a treatment plan for patients with developmental disabilities.

The report identified two issues that need to be addressed: publication of a comprehensive plan for the care of patients with both developmental disabilities and mental illness, and an inventory of the hospital population to establish who is developmentally delayed and who has other cognitive impairments not related to developmental disabilities.

The hospital is working to develop an action plan that would include more direct support for treatment, Hester said.

Reach Rod Ohira at 535-8181 or rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.