Backers Cite Heavy Toll if State Hospital Is Closed

Flanked by parents of longtime patients at Camarillo State Hospital, Supervisor John K. Flynn on Thursday detailed the emotional and financial toll that closing the mental institution would have on Ventura County.

A longtime advocate for the mentally ill, but powerless to forestall the closure, Flynn said losing Camarillo State would cost the region $1.5 billion over the next 20 years and at the same time displace thousands of families.

Relatives of those who live at the hospital issued a new plea to keep the facility open.

Short of that, they are asking state officials to convert the children’s center at the hospital to a facility to treat those patients with families in the tri-counties area.

“We want people to think about the responsibility we all have to take care of these people,” Flynn said.

To boost their case, Flynn and members of a group called the Strategy and Action Team for the Mentally Ill conducted an economic analysis of the potential closure of the hospital.

Assuming a 3 to 1 multiplier effect, shutting down Camarillo State and diverting its $96-million annual budget elsewhere would cost Ventura County $288 million a year, according to the analysis.

State mental health officials also would lose $14 million in federal Medicare reimbursements that Camarillo State patients qualify for each year, the report said. That money would not be recouped if patients are moved to other state hospitals, officials have said.

In addition to the 1,500 hospital jobs that would be lost, another 800 positions would eventually evaporate, the review concluded.

The Cal State Channel Islands campus that has been proposed for the 750 acres would not be fully developed or attended for nearly two decades, the report concluded.

That means the economic advantage of hosting a public university in Ventura County would be years away, Flynn said.

“We’re losing economically when it could be prevented,” Flynn said. “This is a preventable situation.”

Flynn’s remarks came at an afternoon news conference he called to publicize both the economic loss to the county that closing the hospital would bring and the trauma that patients could suffer from moving.

In a letter sent Thursday to Gov. Pete Wilson and other state officials, Flynn and the group members pleaded their case to keep the hospital from closing.

“The human suffering of patients, family, Camarillo State Hospital employees and private employees should be enough justification not to close Camarillo State Hospital,” they wrote.

But even the strategy team members conceded that the hospital will likely close as scheduled by next July.

So they have countered with a plan to treat the patients with families in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties at the children’s center, a 66-bed facility located on a remote corner of the expansive campus.

State officials were intrigued by that latest proposal and pledged to investigate the idea further.

“What’s clear is that the university and the Youth Authority have both more or less left [space for other programs],” said Kevin Eckery, the State and Consumer Services deputy coordinating a task force charged by Wilson with proposing new uses for the hospital property.

“Whether the children’s area would be appropriate for that, it’s too early to say,” Eckery said.

The California Youth Authority proposed converting the hospital and its 85 buildings to a juvenile prison, although that recommendation was rejected by real estate consultants hired by the task force.

Flynn’s news conference came two weeks after consultants backed a plan to convert the hospital grounds to a state university.

The task force will meet Monday to consider that suggestion before forwarding a formal recommendation to the governor about what to do with the hospital after it closes.

Two members of the gubernatorial task force attended the Flynn news conference to lend support to the idea of converting the children’s center to a treatment facility for local patients.

“I can’t visualize anything that would fit better there with a university,” said Leo O’Hearn, a task force member whose son is a longtime Camarillo State patient.

Members of the Families and Advocates for the Mentally Ill group plan to make a last-ditch appeal to the task force, challenging the proposal to shut the facility and move its 800 or so patients.

Demonstrators also are planning a protest in downtown Ventura on Sunday--a candlelight vigil at the statue of Father Junipero Serra to support National Mental Illness Awareness Week.

“The closure of state hospitals has paralleled the increased number of homeless, jailed and imprisoned mentally ill,” Ed Nani, president of the nonprofit organization, said in a prepared statement.

“The Los Angeles County Jail system now houses more seriously mentally ill than any institution in the United States,” he said.

Wilson proposed closing the 60-year-old hospital in January due to the spiraling cost of treating the developmentally disabled and mentally ill patients.

The patients are scheduled to be moved to group homes and other state institutions early next year.