A new job is going to be created within the state Department of Health and Human Services to concentrate on getting more local hospitals to admit mentally ill patients, said Secretary Lanier Cansler.

The assistant secretary for mental health services development will be responsible for expanding what's called "community capacity," which means getting more local services in place for the mentally ill, Lynn Bonner reports.

The state mental hospitals are straining under high demand for short-term care. About half of the patients admitted to state hospitals stay less than a week.

The new assistant secretary will work to get agreements from local hospitals to admit  more psychiatric patients, and will work to "get providers where we need them," Cansler said.

The aim is to have more treatment available for mentally ill patients near their homes, so state mental hospitals can concentrate on long-term patients.

More after the jump.

   Comments (2)

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.

   Comments (0)