The Minnesota Department of Human Services was fined $63,000 — the largest such penalty against a state agency in more than a decade — for failing to protect workers at the St. Peter psychiatric hospital from violent assaults by patients.
The citation by Minnesota OSHA identified nine incidents between early May and mid-July that exposed employees to risk of serious injury or death, underscoring the challenges the state faces in maintaining order in a treatment facility that houses more than 200 of the state's most violent and mentally ill patients.
The citation was issued within a week after another violent assault at the hospital. According to employees, a male patient attacked a female security counselor, tearing at her clothes, before co-workers intervened. The St. Peter Police Department is still investigating the incident.
The reports raise fresh questions about the adequacy of recent efforts to control violence at the Minnesota Security Hospital, the state's largest psychiatric hospital.
Since late last year, the hospital has installed new security cameras; intensified staff training on how to de-escalate violent situations; acquired new protective equipment, such as forearm pads, for staff; hired more security counselors; and opened a new admissions unit this spring to protect new patients from more violent ones.
"More work needs to be done to improve safety at the Minnesota Security Hospital," said Carol Olson, executive director of forensic treatment services at DHS. "We are committed to that work and are currently collaborating with staff, labor partners and others to ensure a safer environment for all employees and patients."
State officials and hospital employees say efforts to curb violence have been hampered by a new state law that has forced the security hospital to accept more patients with criminal histories, who may be more prone to violence. In 2013, the Legislature passed a law, known as the "48-hour rule," that requires state psychiatric hospitals to admit county jail inmates within 48 hours after they are committed by a judge for mental illness.
Staff members at the security hospital have suffered 111 work-related injuries through October, compared with 101 during all of 2014 and 83 in 2013, state records show.
