Staff File Photo
The hospital and patients will move from the site; still to be decided is what to do with Dix's land and buildings.
RALEIGH -- A judge lifted a year-old restraining order Wednesday, allowing state mental health officials to move ahead with plans to relocate patients from Raleigh’s Dorothea Dix Hospital to a new facility in Butner.
Dix will remain open, with more than 100 mental patients housed in units at the 150-year-old facility for the foreseeable future as the state struggles to cope with a dire shortage of in-patient psychiatric beds.
For much of the last decade, the state Department of Health and Human Services planned to close Dix and transfer all of its patients to Central Regional Hospital, which is located about 30 minutes north of Raleigh. But as it neared completion last year, The News & Observer disclosed internal state records of design flaws at the $138 million facility that could endanger patients.
The new hospital partially opened in July 2008, but reports soon surfaced of a faulty alarm system, insufficient staffing and instances of patients being physically abused by staff. The advocacy group Disability Rights North Carolina successfully petitioned a judge in September 2008 to issue an order halting the state’s planned move from Dix, which had been scheduled to begin Oct. 1.
Now, a year later, lawyers for Disability Rights say the state has made significant progress in fixing the problems at Central Regional. John Rittelmeyer, the group’s legal director, told Superior Court Judge Carl Fox Wednesday he no longer opposed the state’s request to lift the restraining order.
In exchange, Disability Rights won pledges from the state to keep adequate staffing levels at Central Regional and increase the programs and services provided to patients there.
“Going forward, [we] will continue to monitor conditions at the hospital, speak to the patients treated there and make certain that the gains achieved in the last year are maintained,” said Vicki Smith, executive director of Disability Rights.
Since the order went into effect last year, chronic bed shortages have forced state mental health officials to back away from plans to close Dix, which will remain open indefinitely. The 2010 budget approved by legislators in July restored $6 million in funding for operations for the old hospital, even as they made $155 million in spending cuts for other mental health programs.
The decision also throws into limbo dreams of Raleigh leaders to turn the more than 300 acre hospital campus between downtown and N.C. State University into a park.
