ATASCADERO — Court orders mandating drastic pay increases for health personnel in California prisons have led to an exodus of workers from state mental hospitals and left the facilities struggling to provide adequate patient care.
Staff shortages at Atascadero State Hospital, where psychiatrist vacancies stand at 70%, have caused the facility to all but freeze new admissions.
All the state's mental hospitals, which like the prisons are also under federal scrutiny, report staff departures for prison jobs that now pay about 40% more. And they fear that many more staffers will leave.
At Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, the medical staff chief pleaded with the federal court-appointed monitor in a December letter, saying a mass exodus of Department of Mental Health "psychiatrists and physicians is expected, and we are already seeing the start of it affecting our institution. Recruiting new people has become increasingly difficult."
In order to keep Napa State Hospital licensed, the state had to hire contract pharmacists after many fled for higher-paying prison jobs. Workers at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk now refer to the facility as "the Titanic" as psychologists apply in droves for prison system jobs. Recruiting e-mails featuring a photo of happy correctional staff members were sent directly to hospital psychologists this month, noting that 1,000 positions must be filled at the new pay rates.
But nowhere is the crisis as pronounced as at Atascadero, which treats California's most seriously mentally ill jail inmates, prisoners and parolees who cannot safely be released to the streets. The admissions freeze at Atascadero has left California prisons, which have long relied on the hospital to stabilize their most severely mentally ill inmates, scrambling to find acute care beds within the prison system.
Atascadero State Hospital Executive Director Mel Hunter said closing the door to most new patients was his only option.
"We had to limit the number of admissions in order to maintain the treatment, safety and security of the 1,230 patients we already had in treatment," he said.
The last straw came Jan. 17, when three psychiatrists left for prison jobs -- swelling the number of psychiatrist departures over the last year to 10. The next morning, Atascadero Medical Director David Fennell told Hunter that the facility could not continue admitting the eight to 12 new patients a day it usually handled.
