The Oregon State Hospital, overburdened with patients from the criminal justice system, won’t accept people with a mental illness who are a danger to themselves or others for at least 10 days, state health officials said Monday.

Patients who haven’t been charged with a crime but need treatment at the state hospital will have to wait in community hospitals until beds become available, no earlier than Dec. 27, according to a letter the Oregon Health Authority sent to advocacy and health care groups

“We acknowledge this may cause a hardship for community hospitals and the people who are waiting for admission to OSH,” wrote Tyler Jones, the hospital’s chief medical officer. “Please know we do not take this action lightly.”

The health authority is doing this to make sure it continues to comply with a judge’s 2002 order that criminal defendants ordered to mental health treatment get to the hospital within seven days. The state has been in trouble this year because many defendants have had to wait in jails far longer than that, though a judge recently found the state to be back in compliance.

The state has been in compliance since July, said spokeswoman Rebeka Gipson-King.

The state’s psychiatric hospitals in Salem and Junction City have 573 beds total for people who are ordered there by a judge on a civil commitment, people found guilty except for insanity and people on an aid-and-assist order – charged with a crime but found in need of treatment to understand their case and how to make choices in their own best interest.

The state tries to keep 32 beds available at all times for unexpected aid and assist and guilty except for insanity patients, Gipson-King said, and in case certain patients need to be moved to another unit because of a medical condition or because they don’t get along with another patient.

The hospital will soon have only 39 beds available because there has been an uptick in new patients who have been found guilty except for insanity, Gipson-King said, and because the number of defendants in need of treatment has continued to rise. That is too close to the minimum, she said, which is why the hospital is now closed to certain patients.

The state is prioritizing criminal defendants over civilly committed people because the latter are usually in an acute care hospital, while criminal defendants are not.

“They are in jail,” Gipson-King said. “Which is exactly where we don’t want people who are in a psychiatric crisis.”

Patients found guilty except for insanity and aid and assist patients are the only ones the state is legally obligated to accept, Gipson-King said.

-- Fedor Zarkhin

fzarkhin@oregonian.com

desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin

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