Staff at Oregon State Hospital failed to make hourly checks of a patient who died of a suspected fentanyl overdose in May, public records and hospital staff said. On May 24, the patient was last observed alive four and a half hours before staff found the person in their room unresponsive, federal regulators said in a Thursday notice to Oregon State Hospital, the state-run secure psychiatric hospital in Salem. As a result, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid have put the Salem hospital in “immediate jeopardy” status, which means it could lose its certification and eligibility for federal funding if it doesn’t make swift changes to fix the problem.
Staff “who conducted continuous rounds during that night shift failed to determine whether or not the patient was alive,” federal regulators wrote in the notice, obtained by the Capital Chronicle through a public records request. The death was at least the hospital’s second fatality since April that federal officials have connected to inadequate medical attention for patients, public records show. Each time, the hospital has faced the threat of losing its federal certification, which also demonstrates whether it is capable of meeting essential standards for hospitals.
In the latest instance, federal officials determined the hospital failed to ensure the patient’s safety based upon a review of security video footage, which showed staff didn’t determine whether each patient was “alive and breathing,” the n.