Psychiatric Facility Gets New Leader

The program director of Simi Valley Hospital’s Behavioral Medicine Service has taken over operations at Ventura County Medical Center’s Hillmont psychiatric facility.

Curtis Ohashi succeeds Elaine McKee, who retired this month.

“Elaine certainly left a high-quality program here,” said Ohashi, 37. “The delivery of services to patients is exemplary. It will be hard to improve on perfection.”

McKee retired after five years of running Hillmont and 15 years as a psychiatric nurse with the county.

Her immediate goal is to finish her master of business administration degree at Cal Lutheran University.

The job, she said, was tough. During her time at Hillmont, she helped oversee the building of a more secure facility.

“It is a very demanding job,” she said. “You have responsibility for acute psychiatric patients with all the ramifications.”

Those ramifications include tragedies like the one that occurred when a patient escaped last December and hanged himself in a Ventura schoolyard.

Jim Matthews, president of the local chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, praised McKee as having “a high degree of management and organizational skills.”

“She is a warm, caring person who listened and helped when she could,” he said.