It came out on the morning before a House Oversight Committee hearing on the hospital downsizing plan that new Gov. Dan McKee inherited from former Gov. Gina Raimondo that appears to be underway without legislative approval - with closed-admissions and an aggressive campaign to discharge patients.
And it came to light soon after the Department of Health denied the public records request UNAP Local 5019 has been pressing since November.
McKee has not responded to repeated entreaties from state Rep. Jessica de la Cruz and Rep. David Place to intervene.
Shortly after 5 p.m., however, his spokewoman Andrea Palagi told The Journal: An engineering firm was sent to check and address the issues specified by the Fire Marshal – they expect a 24-hour fix. The Fire Marshal and the engineering firm both confirm that it is not necessary to move patients.
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PROVIDENCE Decades after the much-heralded deinstitutionalization of people with mental illness, the new McKee administration is backing a plan to open a new Institute for Mental Disease on the Cranston campus of the state hospital.
During their heydey in the early 1950s, state mental hospitals across America held more than half a million patients. Rhode Island s own Institute of Mental Health had an estimated 3,000 of those. As public psychiatric hospitals across America closed from the 1960s into the 1990s . that has resulted in record numbers of people with mental illness being imprisoned often for such petty crimes as trespassing and shoplifting, and sometimes for no offense worse than annoying behavior, The Journal reported in 2014.
Philip estimates that he injected $1 million into each of his scar-tracked arms during the 18 years he lost to heroin.
He watched his Fall River home with its granite countertops, his job as a truck driver, his marriage, and his relationship with his two young children evaporate as quickly as the money he used to keep the sickness of withdrawal at bay.
“It’s a chase every day, from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed,” Philip said.
“I lost everything, just for a drug.”
Philip arrived late to heroin, first snorting it at a friend’s urging at age 27 after becoming hooked on the Percocet that had been prescribed for a back injury. Within a week, his days and nights were ruled by the quest to get more heroin by any means. He’d inject some $450 worth a day. He’d buy it in Providence and sell it in Fall River at a $150 profit to fuel his habit.