Future of Hillcrest Hospital Is Up to State Authorities

County health officials acknowledged Friday that there is nothing they can do to keep the state from recommending Sept. 13 that the county’s Hillcrest mental health hospital be disqualified from participating in the federal Medicare program.

But Chief Administrative Officer Clifford Graves said he still believes the problems cited by the state at CMH, as the mental hospital is known, will be corrected in time to keep the hospital operating and fully funded.

“I am absolutely confident that major deficiencies will be remedied and those standards presently out of compliance will be corrected,” Graves said in a prepared statement released by a county spokesman.

In a joint letter issued last week, the directors of the state departments of health and mental health said inspectors who visited Hillcrest in June had found evidence of patient abuse, poor record-keeping and an overall lack of supervision. The letter said that two recent patient deaths at the hospital could have been prevented.

Even if the state recommends that Hillcrest lose its Medicare certification, the county would still have at least 30 days to make changes before the federal government ended its reimbursement for the hospital’s indigent patients.

Graves said he hoped the county would be able to do with CMH as it did several months ago with the Edgemoor Geriatric Hospital, which was threatened with decertification only to have the sanction lifted after a series of improvements were approved and some were put in place.