Addressing a meeting in Topeka of the Kansas Mental Health Coalition, Ted Jester, assistant director of mental health services at the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, said admissions were suspended Saturday evening when the hospital’s census reached 146 patients.
“This is an unprecedented time in the state of Kansas,” Jester said, noting that the law allowing the hospital to turn away involuntary-admission patients, all of whom have been found to pose a danger to themselves or others, passed in 1986. “That law has never been used until last week,” he said.
Earlier this year, KDADS officials limited the Osawatomie hospital’s daily census to 146 patients after federal surveyors cited the facility for having too many patients, not having enough staff and not doing enough to protect suicidal patients.
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