The head of John Umstead Hospital is stepping down.

Patsy Christian, who faced criticism for commissioning a portrait of herself with state money and problems with patient abuse, is resigning as executive director, according to a release from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Serivces.

She will still work at the department, according to Secretary Dempsey Benton.

"We are appreciative of her dedication to serving the consumers in the state psychiatric hospitals over the years and her commitment to developing the plans to operate the new Central Regional Hospital," he said in a statement. "The state will greatly benefit from her continued involvement in the management of the hospitals."

Dr. Michael Lancaster, a board-certified child adolescent psychiatrist, will serve as interim director of the mental hospital. 

The opening of a new state mental hospital has been postponed.

According to a release from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, patients from Dorothea Dix Hospital and John Umstead Hospital will not be transferred in mid-June.

Instead, patients and staff from Umstead will move to the new Central Regional Hospital in Butner from July 14-18, and patients and staff from Dix will move from July 28-Aug. 1.

Administrative offices will move to the new hospital this week, as planned.

The adjusted schedule provides an additioanl 30 days for Umstead staff to get trained and another 44 days for Dix staff to receive training.

Questions about the new hospitals' safety, staffing shortages and lack of training have led some legislators and Republican gubernatorial nominee Pat McCrory to call for a delay in the opening.

Some legislators say they want to delay the planned closing of two state hospitals, including Dorothea Dix in Raleigh.

The state Department of Health and Human Services wants to move patients from Dix and John Umstead hospitals into new Central Regional Hospital in Butner in February, Lynn Bonner reports.

Legislators said the department was moving too fast and questioned whether there would be room for people needing help.

Mike Moseley, director of the state mental health division, told legislators that the state planned to keep a 36-bed "overflow" unit at Dix that would be open to patients from the region, in addition to 24 beds for patients from Wake County.

Even if the department finds space for patients in hospitals, overflow units and state alcohol treatment centers, it doesn't mean there are enough people working in those places to properly care for them, said Rep. Jennifer Weiss, a Cary Democrat.

"You can have physical beds," she said. "That doesn't mean you can take care of people."

Hospital investigators have recommended that the state's mental hospital in Butner lose federal money for failure to control patient violence.

A letter from state investigators to the hospital this week said that John Umstead Hospital "failed to prevent repeated incidents of patient to patient and patient to staff abuse," reports Lynn Bonner.

The hospital has not received a written report on the investigation, said Patsy Christian, the hospital's CEO, but has about three weeks to draw up a plan to correct deficiencies before money is cut off. Investigators cited problems with the hospital's governing body, patients' rights and nursing services.

Three of the state's four psychiatric hospitals have been threatened with loss of federal funds this year. In August, the federal government made the rare move of taking away money from Broughton Hospital in Morganton after one patient died after being restrained and another was seriously injured in a fall.

Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro was threatened with the loss of funding, but investigators accepted its correction plan.

Christian said Umstead did not have more violent incidents than other state psychiatric hospitals.

"We have good policies in place," she said.