RALEIGH - The state Senate voted unanimously Wednesday to approve a bill that would require all patient deaths in state mental hospitals to receive a formal review by a medical examiner.

The measure, which is expected to win approval from the state House within the next week, follows a series of articles in The News & Observer that detailed 82 questionable patient deaths in state mental hospitals and homes for people with developmental disabilities.

Many of those patients' bodies were buried or cremated without being autopsied or examined by a pathologist.

On March 4, Gov. Mike Easley said he would support a new law requiring all hospital deaths to be reported to the medical examiner. On Wednesday, a press aide for Easley said he will sign the bill into law when it reaches his desk.

Sen. Martin Nesbitt, an Asheville Democrat who was the bill's primary sponsor, told his colleagues before Wednesday's vote that the new law is needed to ensure that all state hospital deaths receive an outside review.

"We found out there were some deaths occurring that were not being investigated," Nesbitt said on the Senate floor. "Obviously, that's a problem. ... Hopefully, it will put a little more openness on our institutions."

The bill passed with little debate.

State law already requires that deaths resulting from homicide, suicide, accidents or unknown causes be reported to a medical examiner. The N&O's review of patient deaths in the state's 14 mental institutions since December 2000 showed that some recorded as "natural" were known by staff to have died of symptoms related to shoddy care.

Last month, a state pathologist formally reissued a death certificate in a case highlighted by the newspaper, changing the cause of death from a heart attack to suicide by drug overdose.

Donald Michael Jones, 32, slipped into a coma and died in 2006 after swallowing 28 antidepressants in his room at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro. Though a subsequent federal review found the hospital at fault, that information was never shared with the medical examiner or Jones' family. His original death certificate said the father of four young children died of natural causes.

Dr. John Butts, the state's chief medical examiner, said Wednesday the new law will put similar procedures in place for state mental hospitals that are already required for deaths in prison or police custody.

All mental hospital deaths would have to be reported to a local medical examiner, who will then assume jurisdiction over the body. The pathologist will then be required to independently determine the cause of death and file a written report to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill.

Those written reports will be public records. Until now, the state Department of Health and Human Services has refused to identify those who died in its facilities, arguing that making the names public would violate the dead patients' rights to privacy.

The state budget approved Tuesday provides the medical examiner's office with money to hire a full-time investigator to review state hospital deaths.

"The concern was that some deaths that should have been reported were not getting reported," Butts said. "We will have an investigator whose sole job will be to go through these and make sure we have all the information we need to accurately determine why the patient died. The public can then be assured there is a review of these fatalities outside the mental health system."

(Staff writer Lynn Bonner contributed to this report.)

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