Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

The failing mental health formula

Posted on October 9, 2008 by Staff

Chris Fitzsimon

The last two weeks have been like the last seven years in the state mental health system, a discouraging, infuriating, frustrating mess that raises questions about financial management, access to services and patient safety.

Ten days ago came news that the CEO of the largest regional agency in the state that manages mental heath services was resigning amid conflict of interest charges.

Tom McDevitt stepped down from both his $146,000-a-year job as head of the Smoky Mountain Center and as director of a nonprofit foundation associated with the center. The nonprofit conducted real estate business with McDevitt’s wife and his daughter works there.

The Smoky Mountain Center is one of 25 Local Management Entities (LMEs) created as part of the 2001 mental health reform efforts to manage community services that are provided by private for-profit companies and nonprofits.

The Elizabeth City Daily Advance reported this weekend that Albemarle Mental Health Center, the LME in Northeastern North Carolina, has spent all of its state funding just four months into the state fiscal year and would no longer provide community-support services for patients in the 10 counties the center serves.

Center officials say the state hasn’t provided enough money. State officials say the center has not managed its money properly, and while the two sides bicker people in that part of the state may not receive the services they need.

The News & Observer reported Sunday that top officials at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro have approved $140,000 in travel expenses for employees to attend conferences as far away as Hawaii and Eastern Europe.

Money from drug companies and foreign medical schools paid for the trips, raising all sorts of ethical questions. Health and Human Services Secretary Dempsey Benton issued a statement saying there hasn’t been oversight of the money and the trips.

It has become a predictable cycle. The media or an advocacy group uncovers a problem in the mental health system. State officials promise to do better. Then the media uncovers another problem. State officials issue another press release promising to do better. Then comes another report of another problem.

Cherry hospital lost its federal funding recently after a patient died after being ignored by the staff for 22 hours and there were allegations that another patient was beaten.

Last week state officials announced they would not contest a judge’s decision to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the transfer of patients from Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh to the new Central Regional Hospital in Butner.

The advocacy group Disability Rights asked for the restraining order and presented evidence that there were still safety problems at the new hospital and reportedly federal authorities are looking into that too.

Two of the state’s biggest LMEs have serious management problems, officials at Cherry Hospital have been traveling all over the place on the drug industry tab and state officials now acknowledge that the new mental hospital still isn’t ready for all the patients it was supposed to be ready for last spring.

Benton inherited a mess when he took over last year and has been playing whack-a-mole ever since. As soon as he addresses one problem, another one pops up and the department issues another statement that more oversight is needed.

We get that. More oversight is needed, but it is not enough. One of the arguments always made against fundamental changes, like revisiting privatization or Benton’s plan to consolidate the 25 LMEs into nine or fewer, is that the system needs time to settle down, that there have been enough changes in the last few years.

Maybe, but things haven’t changed much for the people with a mental illness or a developmental disability. The hospitals are still not safe. The services they need are still not available in their communities. And the skepticism they have about the people managing key parts of the delivery system keeps being justified.

We need a new plan. The scandal-then-investigation-then-press-release formula isn’t enough.

Chris Fitzsimon is the director of NC Policy Watch.

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme