A New Eastern State is Planned: Legislative OK Needed for Psychiatric Facility

By Beth Musgrave, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.

Aug. 22–For decades, patients and staff at Eastern State Hospital have tolerated a temperamental boiler, crumbling buildings and ancient plumbing.

But if the state General Assembly gives its approval, a new state-of-the-art psychiatric hospital could be completed in the next three years.

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services and Bluegrass Regional Mental Health Mental Retardation Board, which operates Eastern State Hospital, signed an agreement yesterday giving Bluegrass the money — $1 million — and the authority to move ahead with plans for a new facility.

Details of the agreement will be announced at noon today at a news conference at Eastern State Hospital in Lexington.

“We’ve reached an agreement signed today with Bluegrass Regional Mental Health-Mental Retardation to start the process of building a new Eastern State Hospital,” Gov. Ernie Fletcher said yesterday. Fletcher pledged yesterday that if re-elected in November, money to build a new Eastern State Hospital will be in his 2008 budget request.

Joseph Toy, CEO and president of Bluegrass, said the $1 million will go toward employing an architect to finalize designs and getting estimates on construction and other costs, such as selling bonds for the project. Bluegrass took over day-to-day operations of Eastern State Hospital in 1995, but the buildings and the land are owned by the state.

Toy already has a design that he and mental health advocates developed several years ago, but that design is preliminary. At that time, Toy estimated that the facility would cost about $130 million, but those costs are no longer accurate.

Bluegrass has its sights on land for a new hospital, but the deal is not yet in writing.

The location, the final design and the details about funding will be ready come January, when the legislature reconvenes for the 2008 session and tackles the budget, Toy said.

Advocates for the mentally ill applauded the agreement yesterday but said it was decades overdue.

Eastern State Hospital is the second-oldest psychiatric facility in the country. Its roots trace back to the early 1800s. At its peak in the 1940s, Eastern State Hospital housed more than 2,000 patients. Today its average daily population is 150. Only three of more than a dozen buildings house patients. Some of the buildings on the campus at Fourth Street and Newtown Pike date to the late 1880s. The last major renovation at Eastern State was in the 1980s.

Over the years, the facility has been forced to close buildings or parts of buildings that were no longer safe or no longer used. A July Herald-Leader report about conditions at Eastern State found other problems there, including asbestos, lead paint, exposed wiring and poor fire protection systems. Former patients, families of patients and staff said temperatures inside buildings varied widely despite maintenance efforts to tame the temperamental heating and cooling systems.

Kelly Gunning, executive director of the Lexington affiliate of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, said she is optimistic that state legislators will back the plan to build a new hospital.

“I don’t think there’s a humane person in Kentucky that believes that treatment should continue in that facility,” Gunning said. “This will help build momentum. We couldn’t be happier.”

Fletcher said yesterday the Cabinet for Health and Family Services did a survey of all its facilities nearly four years ago and realized that Eastern State Hospital was obsolete. But problems at Oakwood, the state’s largest home for people with mental disabilities, have kept the cabinet’s attention focused on other areas.

“It’s overdue,” Fletcher said. “It has served the public very well over the years. But it’s not something that can be renovated. It needs to be replaced.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.

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