Hillcrest Hospital Tour Is Scuttled : State Mental Health Official Feared ‘Lobbying’ Tactics

A visit by a top state official to San Diego County’s troubled Hillcrest mental hospital was scuttled this week, in part because of county officials’ efforts to use the event to boost their attempts to keep the hospital open.

Dr. Michael O’Connor, director of the state Department of Mental Health, had tentatively planned to visit the hospital today while he was in San Diego on another matter.

But O’Connor, who said he was on a tight schedule, told The Times he dropped any plans to visit the Hillcrest facility after he learned that the county planned to invite some state legislators to join the tour and, perhaps, to pressure him to lobby federal health agencies on the county’s behalf.

“The department is still in the process of reviewing the Hillcrest facility,” O’Connor said. “I felt it really was not proper for me to go down there and be turned around in a major public setting.”

As the state’s director of mental health, O’Connor could play a key role in deciding the hospital’s future. The federal government is considering whether it should end Medicare funding for the mental hospital because of past and ongoing problems in patient care and management, and federal officials may look to O’Connor for an evaluation of improvements the county says it has made.

O’Connor said he learned of the county’s expanded plans for his tour from Assemblyman Larry Stirling (D-San Diego).

Stirling said he contacted O’Connor after he found that a memorandum announcing the department director’s visit had been posted at the hospital.

The memo, written by hospital administrator Karenlee Robinson, said O’Connor would probably be accompanied by “several state Assembly members.” It said the visit would give O’Connor the chance “to review our progress first hand so that he can speak favorably on our behalf to the federal officials from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Health Care Finance Administration.”

“Again we have an opportunity to put our best foot forward and gain another source of support,” Robinson wrote.

Stirling, who last year made public reports of improper patient care at the hospital and has been a critic of the county’s handling of the issue ever since, said he thought the county was trying to use legislators to influence O’Connor outside the formal review process.

“It seems to be typical of this branch of the county (mental health) to play these kinds of maneuvers,” Stirling said. “They ought to be spending their energy cleaning the place up.”

County officials said they meant no harm by inviting O’Connor to tour the hospital with lawmakers.

“He had originally said he would come and tour Hillcrest if he had the time when he was down here,” said David Janssen, acting county chief administrative officer. “We then took it upon ourselves to set up a tour that was more than he had bargained for.”

Janssen said the county planned to invite state legislators and congressmen.

“He became concerned that that might make it a bit political and it might jeopardize the objectivity of the mental health department,” Janssen said. “It was just easier to drop the whole thing.”

Janssen took pains Wednesday to be diplomatic toward Stirling, with whom county relations of late have been less than amiable. He said Stirling deserves credit for bringing about improvements at the hospital, even if his tactics sometimes irritate county officials.