Federal regulators arrived at the Brattleboro Retreat, the largest private psychiatric hospital in Vermont, on Monday.
Representatives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will be in Brattleboro for three days. They will review Retreat practices to determine whether staff are complying with an approved plan of correction.
CMS announced last spring that it would terminate funding for the Retreat unless officials could show that the psychiatric hospital has improved services. The termination date has since been moved back twice.
In July, CMS determined that Retreat staff had improperly restrained and involuntarily medicated patients and asked local police to intervene in cases where staff should have been able to manage crisis situations. Regulators also found that medical charts for patients were based on templates and did not include particulars about individual patients.
CMS placed a public notice in the Brattleboro Reformer over the weekend announcing that the termination in funding could occur as of Nov. 15.
Retreat officials are confident that staff are following the plan of correction and are complying with federal requirements.
The state of Vermont has 14 to 24 patients in the care of the commissioner at the hospital at any given time. The Retreat is part of the state’s decentralized system of care for patients with severe psychiatric illnesses.
