JUNCTION CITY, Ore. – The Oregon State Hospital campus in Junction City has less than a month to solve a laundry list of problems.

An inspection in January found numerous issues, including patient escapes.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid issued a report on May 5, detailing the full extent of the problems found at the facility.

That includes “failure to prevent elopement of patients during off-campus activities. Failure to maintain accountability for patients during on-campus activities off the secure unit. Failure to prevent patient entry into unauthorized areas. Failure to prevent patient to patient sexual contact and sexual assault. Failure to prevent patient to patient physical altercations. Failure to prevent patient suicide attempts and self-harm with contraband, unsafe and prohibited items.”

Other issues included “failure to prevent other unsafe conditions in the physical environment [and] Staff responses to incidents failed to include investigations to identify causes and to plan and implement corrective actions to prevent recurrence for the affected patient and other patients.”

The deputy superintendent of the state hospital, Derek Wehr, told the state hospital review board Thursday that the facility has a deadline of June 14 to make changes it recommended in response to the inspection.

The Oregon Health Authority says the January inquiry followed the escape of a patient in late 2021.

In December 2021, a man convicted of arson except for insanity for setting fire to a church left his group during a supervised visit at the 5th Street Market in downtown Eugene.

Months after the inspection, a different patient escaped custody during a visit to Alton Baker Park in Eugene.

This was at least the fourth time this patient had escaped custody since a court found him guilty except for insanity for the 2004 murder of his mother in Eugene.

This was his fourth escape since becoming a state hospital patient.

Wehr doesn’t anticipate any issues with implementing the changes, which include proposed staffing boosts for off-campus visits.

“One to one or two to one staff to patient ratio, those are some tool we’re looking at,” said Wehr.

Other changes include updates to incident management and enhancing the risk assessment process that determines which patients can go on supervised off-campus trips.

“There is a very robust process, a risk review process," Wehr said. "Every patient who has privileges for on or off-grounds outings goes through. We want to make that process even more robust."

“Part of it is making sure you’re selecting patients who are going to get the most benefit," he added, "and also making sure the outings they’re going on are really closely related to the treatment care plan."

At this time, off-campus from the Junction City campus are on hold, but Wehr doesn’t expect that to be a long-term restriction.

“When something like [an escape] happens, we need to take a step back and just make sure we have all the processes and procedures in place so we can ensure the patients, the staff and the community are safe when we have off-grounds outings,” he said.

Wehr said changes at the Junction City campus will likely be reflected in operations at the Salem facility.

You can read the full CMS plan here.

A request to the Oregon Health Authority to review the list of changes sent to CMS was not immediately returned.