WPRO News
State leaders unveil a new sign after obtaining a new license for the Rhode Island State Psychiatric Hospital at the state Howard Complex in Cranston.
By relocating psychiatric patients from the nearby Eleanor Slater Hospital to the nearby Roosevelt Benton facility, the state stands to gain up to $40 million in Medicaid reimbursement, says Rhode Island Director of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals Richard Charest.
“By pulling these 52 patients into another hospital, we have a tangential benefit of picking up that additional reimbursement,” Charest said at a ceremony outside the Roosevelt Benson facility on Tuesday morning as a new sign was unveiled.
During the speaking program, Governor Dan McKee credited a Providence Journal reporter with spurring action on transforming the psychiatric hospital.
“This was one of Kathy Gregg’s main projects, and she did more and more articles on this issue,” McKee said.
“That kept on making me more and more determined, actually, to come up with solutions here that really mattered to the people who we are serving the most,” he said.
Some patients will be transferred to the Zambarano unit of Eleanor Slater Hospital at Burrillville. Charest says that the state has new management in place, and is also in the process of hiring a new chief nursing officer.
“The patients that come here are generally not guilty by reason of insanity, they’re incompetent to stand trial. We’ll try to restore them to competency and reintegrate them back into society. Some of the patients are here for a long time,” Charest said.
