Sen. O’Ban: Blame Inslee for Western State Hospital defunding

As Washington scratches its head over why Western State Hospital lost its federal certification, and in turn $53 million in annual funding, one lawmaker says he knows exactly who to blame for the problem — Governor Jay Inslee.

RELATED: Washington’s hospital loses certification, $53 million in funding

The federal government removed Western State Hospital’s certification for funding this week.

“We won’t have $100 million now over the next biennium because of this decertification,” Republican State Senator Steve O’Ban told KTTH Radio’s Jason Rantz. “… we have to take money from some other need to fill this gap.”

O’Ban says Inslee “owns” the issue with Western State Hospital because the Department of Social and Health Services is an executive administration directly under the governor’s purview. But more than that, Inslee has directly interfered with solutions to the hospital’s problems.

“Inslee owns this mess because he gutted a very important bipartisan piece of legislation that I helped author to make some needed reforms back in 2016 at Western State Hospital,” O’Ban said.

“One of the things that the federal government cited as the reason for decertification is that the hospital could never provide an adequate staffing model to address the mix of the patients there,” he said. “You have patients with certain high acuity issues, serious mental illness, they need a specific type of professional to help them. Then you have patients with different psychological issues and you need a different mix of professionals.”

For example, O’Ban’s 2016 legislation would have addressed the state’s shortage of psychiatrists, he said. It would have allowed psychiatrist advanced registered nurses to take on some of those duties.

“The governor vetoed that provision that added this professional group to do the care needed,” he said. “I think it was under pressure from the psychiatrist union who had a turf problem.”

Another issue was “discharge planning.” About 40 percent of patients at the hospital are waiting to leave, according to O’Ban. But there are no decent discharge plans to create appropriate care for them in their home communities. O’Ban promoted a reform for the issue in 2016, and the governor vetoed that as well, he said.

O’Ban argues that Inslee may want to be president of the United States, but he better get Washington in order first.

“He now wants to go to a higher level of executive responsibility, he wants to be the chief executive of our nation,” O’Ban said. “In my view, before he can say he’s qualified for that job he needs to meet the challenges of this state first. If he’s running for president, he needs to get back to Washington and help solve this problem — frankly, one that he should have been providing better leadership on back in 2016.”

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