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So much for transparency at the Oregon State Hospital.
Oregon Health Authority leaders have spent over a year assuring state lawmakers and the public that conditions have improved at the psychiatric hospital, since Lookout Eugene-Springfield first reported on the extensive safety concerns that went unaddressed by administrators until they contributed to the deaths of two patients held in seclusion.
But health authority Director Dr. Sejal Hathi’s testimony on Wednesday to a joint hearing of state House and Senate behavioral health committees was most notable for what she wouldn’t say under pressure from lawmakers, especially Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, D-Corvallis, whose probing questions are appreciated.
“How did we get to a point where we had a state hospital that apparently was not even aware of what the federal requirements were?” Gelser Blouin asked Hathi, referring to a finding by federal regulators that multiple violations contributed to Lane County resident Kenneth Hass’ death in March 2025 after months in seclusion.
“It’s confusing to all of us, and that’s why so many changes have been instituted to make sure that this never happens again,” Hathi responded, saying inexplicably at another point that “I don’t want to speculate as to why those decisions were made, why this was not understood to be unacceptable, why it was normalized.”
In fairness to Hathi, she took over as OHA director in early 2024, several months after the November 2023 death of a different patient in seclusion. But it’s still an unacceptable response from the leader of the agency charged with providing care for roughly 700 psychiatric patients at its Salem and Junction City hospitals. How can Hathi say it will never happen again if she doesn’t understand what happened in the first place?
Recent reporting by Lookout has also called into question what Hathi actually knew about the hospital’s seclusion practices and when. The Oregon Health Authority maintains she didn’t grasp the scope of the seclusion problem until after Hass’ death, but she and other state hospital leaders were emailed a consultant’s report four months earlier that cited overuse of seclusion as an issue requiring immediate attention.
It gave the impression of a director looking to avoid assigning blame, rather than one looking to learn from the past.
None of this is to say that she bears personal responsibility for the deaths. But to hear the head of the agency tasked with treating psychiatric patients avoid questions about failures of the hospital under her oversight just furthers the opacity that’s been offered instead of transparency. It is ill-conceivable to believe that 15 months after Hass’ death, she still has no answers.
The repeated attempts by Hathi and interim hospital superintendent James Diegel to deflect questions about the past and focus on the future fly in the face of public accountability and legislative oversight.
And the health authority only doubled down on non-transparency afterward in an apparent attempt to block Lookout’s reporting on the hospital. Officials led lawmakers and three members of the media on a tour of the hospital, but told the Lookout reporter whose coverage first broke the story of Hass’ death in seclusion, prompted the resignation of the former state hospital superintendent and spurred hearings on reforms that he couldn’t attend for security reasons and because of the number of people on the tour.
The Oregon Health Authority takes a page out of the current presidential administration in denying Lookout the same access as other media outlets, blocking reporters from doing the public’s work. We encourage the health agency to immediately release a statement that there will be no such blockage going forward.
The arrival of a new superintendent next month gives the troubled state hospital a chance to turn the page. But we urge the health authority not to repeat the lack of curiosity about the past it displayed Wednesday. If they won’t, Gelser Blouin and other state lawmakers must continue holding them to account. They must keep up their demands for information about everything that has gone wrong at Oregon State Hospital. Hathi and other administrators may not like it, but it’s the only way to move forward.
