The federal government has pulled money from the state's psychiatric hospital in Burke County in response to a February patient death and an August patient injury.
Broughton Hospital in Morganton, one of four state mental hospitals, will not receive money for Medicare or Medicaid patients admitted after Aug. 25, reports Lynn Bonner. Federal payments for patients in the hospital before Aug. 25 will continue for one month.
The hospital receives about $1 million a month in Medicaid and Medicare payments. Its annual budget is about $60 million.
The federal government is responding to the Feb. 1 death of 27-year-old Anthony Lowery, who died at the hospital while staff members were holding him down. The News Herald in Morganton reported in July that an autopsy report found that Lowery died of asphyxiation after a hospital staff member sat on his torso for for two to three minutes.
Read more after the jump.
–––––
An Aug. 19 incident, where a 44-year-old patient who was supposed to be closely watched fell, also prompted the federal government to stop payments.
The state is sending a team of experts to the hospital Tuesday to identify and resolve problems, said Jim Osberg, who oversees state hospitals at the state Department of Health and Human Services.
After the state comes up with a plan for improvement, it will ask the federal government to start sending money to Broughton again.
In the meantime, the hospital will continue to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients.
"It's a very critical facility for the western part of the state," Osberg said of Broughton. "It's a vital part of the continuum of care for mental health services."
Calls to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services were not immediately returned.
State hospitals have been threatened with loss of federal money in the past, but Osberg said he did not know that it's ever happened before.
