QuickTake:

Dave Baden, Oregon State Hospital’s new interim superintendent, promised to work quickly to make changes and restore accountability in a nearly one-hour recorded town hall meeting with hospital staffers.

Oregon State Hospital’s new interim superintendent, Dave Baden, has promised to move quickly to come up with a plan for Gov. Tina Kotek in the wake of a patient’s March death in the psychiatric facility.

In an all-staff meeting held Monday, Baden insisted on accountability and doing things differently. And he told staffers that he doesn’t have all the answers.

The meeting was recorded for employees who couldn’t attend. Lookout Eugene-Springfield obtained and verified an audio recording of the meeting. 

Kotek appointed Baden, deputy director of the Oregon Health Authority, as the hospital’s new interim superintendent April 11 after learning more about the March 18 death of a Lane County patient at the hospital’s main Salem campus. Kenneth Hass, 25, died in a seclusion room, and federal and accreditation inspectors have faulted the hospital’s emergency response and lax monitoring.

Kotek directed Baden, who started at the health authority in 2019 as its chief financial officer, to create a 30-day plan for improvements at the hospital, which can hold up to 558 patients in its main Salem facility and another 145 at a satellite campus in Junction City. 

To accomplish that task, he’s asking employees for feedback.

“First and foremost, I stand in front of you not an expert in managing a state hospital,” Badan said at the Monday meeting. “I’m not going to sit up here and say, ‘Hey, guess what? I know all of the clinical things that you should be working on.’”

In that meeting, Baden said his job is to be focused on patient care and safety. Citing concerns around the most recent patient death, Baden said his job is to assure that accountability mechanisms are in place. 

Public records show Hass was in a locked seclusion room with an unlocked bathroom and the staffing level was insufficient to respond to his multiple falls.

Baden was appointed on April 11, the same day that the hospital’s former interim superintendent, Dr. Sara Walker, resigned. Baden said at the meeting that Walker was asked to resign.

Baden is not the first to want changes at the hospital. In an August 2024 meeting with OHA Director Sejal Hathi, hospital managers complained about a culture that lacks accountability, ignores rules and retaliates against staff who try to correct shortcomings. Lookout Eugene-Springfield also obtained a recording of that meeting, which was surreptitiously recorded.

The hospital has a history of problems. Hass’ death is one of four that federal regulators with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have flagged since Kotek took office in January 2023. 

Baden has three overarching goals for his plan. First, he wants a plan that will help prevent the next catastrophic event, such as a patient death, before it occurs. Baden said that requires the involvement of all employees, from clinicians to support staffers. 

The plan also needs to operate the hospital as a 24/7 institution, Baden said, citing concerns from employees about the care of patients on weekends. If the attitude on a Friday afternoon is to put an issue off until Monday, “that’s a challenge for that patient,” Baden said. “What happens to that patient over the weekend?”

Baden said the third goal is about clarifying roles and sharing responsibility. That’s necessary for accountability, he said.

“We’ve got to figure out changes to how people feel empowered, first and foremost, for patient safety and care,” Baden said.

This means staffers should feel comfortable speaking up to make conditions safer for patients, Baden said. 

“I’ve heard from a lot of people that their folks do not feel confident and safe in bringing up patient safety concerns,” he said. “That can’t be the Oregon State Hospital. It just can’t be.”

Baden reminded them they all have the same boss: Gov. Tina Kotek. 

“We all work for the governor,” he said. “I’m here because the governor told me to be here.”

During a press conference Monday, Kotek said the 30-day plan will be different from the hospital’s response to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Kotek said she didn’t want to wait for the full report from the federal agency but rather wants to immediately begin improving patient safety.

“We also have long-term problems that are outside of the incident that happened,” Kotek said. “So that 30-day plan is not just going to be incident specific, but also talk about where we’re going to be in 30 days, 60 days, hopefully 90 days, to stabilize services at the state hospital.”

At the hospital, Baden is leaning on staff for feedback.

“I’m probably going to make some mistakes that you all are going to point back out to me and be like, ‘Hey, Dave, this part isn’t working,’” he said. “I’m open to hear that.”

Baden was unavailable for comment on Friday, but hospital spokesperson Amber Shoebridge said steps in Baden’s plan include additional monitoring of patients who are at risk so they have appropriate care.

For a 24/7 hospital, that means steps like improving the hospital’s in-house medical clinic and standardized protocols so patients receive “vital care” no matter the day or time they need it, Shoebridge said. 

Clarifying roles and responsibilities, Shoebridge said, means improving on-the-job training with clearer expectations of responsibility across all disciplines, with a focus first on patient safety.

At the town hall meeting, some staffers lamented the lack of positive media coverage of the hospital. Shoebridge, the spokesperson, said at the meeting that she is sometimes limited in what she can say due to patient privacy regulations.

“The only way we can counter this in terms of public relations is to continue to move forward and to try and try to find ways that we can put positive things out there,” Shoebridge said.

Former superintendent asked to resign 

In the meeting, Baden praised Dr. Sara Walker, the former interim superintendent, but said the superintendent was asked to resign.

He said he’s had the “great pleasure” of watching her speak before state legislators and knows how “talented that she is and can be.”

But the superintendent of the state hospital is ultimately responsible for everything that happens there, he said.

“Things happen and circumstances come up to the OHA director and come up to the governor’s office that really force a governor, force an OHA director to say, ‘You know what, stuff like what happened around that patient cannot happen going forward,’” Baden said. “And she was asked to resign.”

“The governor has expectations for this place,” he said. “I have expectations. The OHA director has expectations for this place, and we can do better.”

Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to combat fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.