Veteran Center Psych Ward Will Reopen : Medicine: The facility, closed after five patient suicides, will have fewer beds, a retrained staff and upgraded equipment.

A troubled psychiatric ward at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Beach--shut down in May after five patient suicides--is scheduled to reopen Monday as a federal investigation into the deaths continues.

The number of beds in the locked ward, where the most unstable psychiatric patients are held, has been reduced from 28 to 10, said medical center Director Dean Stordahl, who listed several improvements.

Nurses and nursing assistants have been retrained, new medical supervisors have been named to direct the staff, the equipment has been upgraded for safety and new windows have been installed to help prevent suicides, Stordahl said.

Although the ward will admit about one-third as many patients, the staff of nine nurses will remain the same. All have recently completed six weeks of rigorous training in psychiatric care, instructed by professionals from several VA hospitals, he said.

“I have every confidence that the changes we have identified and implemented will allow us to provide the highest level of care,” Stordahl said. “This is not to imply the patients were unsafe before, but when you have a (smaller) unit and the same number of staff, I think the patients will be safer.”

The locked ward will receive patients for the first time since it was abruptly closed May 11, less than a month after a Marine--Geraldo Cruz, 27--hanged himself in a hospital bathroom with the laces from his combat boots. His death was the fifth hospital-related suicide in 13 months, the same number recorded by health officials in all five state-run mental hospitals in 1987-88.

Several psychiatric nurses, speaking on the condition of anonymity, complained in interviews last spring that the locked ward was in turmoil. They said suicidal patients were not kept safe, patients had been released without adequate psychiatric evaluation and those considered dangerous to themselves or others were escaping an average of once a month.

The office of the inspector general--the Veterans Administration’s investigative arm in Washington--ordered an investigation after a May 12 Times article detailing the suicides from March 22, 1989, to April 17. During that time, three patients hanged themselves, one jumped off the roof and a fifth shot himself in the mouth shortly after doctors allegedly granted him an early release.

A team of two VA medical experts spent nearly three weeks in May and June reviewing procedures at the hospital’s 75-bed psychiatric unit, which contains the locked ward. That wing of the huge, 1,368-bed hospital is affiliated with UC Irvine Medical Center.

The VA is in the process of contracting with an independent medical expert to review the deaths, VA spokeswoman Donna St. John said from Washington.

Once concluded, all of the findings will be submitted to the VA’s deputy secretary--a Cabinet-level position--for review, she said.

Two of the five suicides occurred in the locked ward itself, where suicidal, violent, homicidal and gravely disabled patients are supposed to be kept under constant or near-constant supervision.

During the eight weeks that the ward was closed, 82 patients were referred to other psychiatric hospitals. Because of crowded conditions within the VA system, just 19 went to other VA hospitals. At a cost of $189,000, 63 were placed in private facilities, Stordahl said.

A separate unit has also been set up to hold elderly and other patients who require strict psychiatric supervision but are not considered dangerous. Previously, such patients were kept with those deemed violent, suicidal or homicidal, Stordahl said.