Cherry Hospital chief quitting

The director of the troubled state mental hospital in Goldsboro is stepping down at the end of the year.

Advocates for patients said they hope the state will hire an experienced administrator who can change a culture at Cherry Hospital that many say has been more punitive than therapeutic.

Jack St. Clair told the Cherry Hospital staff in a memo Friday that he is leaving his job on Dec. 31 after three years.

"I will always remember the care and compassion you show to our consumers every day, and the commitment everyone makes day in and day out to support our mission," he said in the memo.

Cherry has been under scrutiny for staff assaults on patients and substandard care. In September, the federal government said it would no longer pay the state about $800,000 a month to care for patients at Cherry because the hospital is dangerous.

Investigators found that workers played cards and watched television while a 50-year-old man sat dying in a chair nearby. Workers lied to investigators and falsified records in the case in which the patient, Steven H. Sabock, went without food and adequate care for nearly a full day in April.

Last month, two former Cherry workers were convicted of punching and kicking a patient. Another worker accused of sexually assaulting a patient resigned.

As St. Clair's departure was announced Friday, the state Department of Health and Human Services made public documents confirming two more violent incidents at the hospital.

On Tuesday night, a 65-year-old nurse working as a temporary employee was beaten and choked by a male patient sent to Cherry from Lenoir County, where he had been jailed on assault charges. The nurse was taken to Wayne Memorial Hospital, where she was treated and sent home.

On Dec. 3, a health care technician was arrested and accused of assaulting a patient two weeks earlier. Records show Shelia Y. Lane, 37, was charged with assault and battery on a handicapped person, a misdemeanor. On Friday, Lane was still employed at Cherry, where she has worked since 1996, said a spokeswoman for the Office of State Personnel.

Lane is at least the 10th Cherry employee charged with assaulting a patient in little more than a year.

Back to Black Mountain

Dempsey Benton, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that St. Clair has been offered a transfer to Black Mountain Neuro-Medical Treatment Center to fill a vacant position as business manager.

An agency spokesman, Tom Lawrence, said he did not know whether St. Clair has accepted the job at Black Mountain, which serves people with developmental disabilities or Alzheimer's disease.

St. Clair did not return a telephone call Friday afternoon.

If he accepts the business manager job, he would be going back to a center where he was once director.

The Black Mountain job pays $77, 277 a year. St. Clair is paid $117,000 a year as director of Cherry.

The Goldsboro hospital has become a prominent example of a mental health system that is loaded with problems. The five state mental hospitals that have operated in the past 16 months have been threatened with the loss of federal insurance payments because investigators found dangerous conditions.

Cherry was the state's second mental hospital in about a year to lose its federal payments. Directors of three hospitals have resigned or been demoted since last December.

As Cherry was about to lose its federal payments, the state hired a management firm, the Compass Group, to run the hospital alongside St. Clair. The Compass Group will remain in charge after St. Clair leaves, according to DHHS. The agency has started to look for a new director.

In August, Benton criticized Cherry administrators for lax discipline of workers who neglected Sabock, and said agency directors in Raleigh should have been told of the circumstances surrounding Sabock's death.

Still, Benton said he trusted St. Clair to make improvements. Benton did not return calls Friday.

As a way to improve care and regain its federal funding, the hospital closed a patient unit and reorganized in a way that agency officials said would provide better supervision of employees who provide direct care for patients.

'Boiled over'

Representatives with Disability Rights North Carolina, who go to Cherry two or three times a month, have not noticed meaningful changes, said executive director Vicki Smith.

The advocacy group is seeking information on several cases of abuse and neglect, she said, at least three of which occurred in the last 90 days.

"I think the recent incidences of ongoing and continued abuse have boiled over, and it's clear that Jack could not turn around the culture of that organization," she said. "I think what the state needs at this point is an experienced hospital administrator -- someone who can provide leadership that Cherry Hospital so desperately needs."

Todd Smith, a registered nurse at Cherry for about 13 years, said St. Clair inherited many problems, but the hospital has regressed under his leadership.

"The morale is bad," Smith said. "If we're not progressing after three years, you have to change the captaincy and see if someone else can do a better job."

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)