Mental Hygiene

State and Anne Arundel County officials reached a tentative agreement yesterday to provide emergency funding to Omni House, a Glen Burnie mental health provider that is one of many throughout Maryland reeling from the state's mental health crisis. Under the arrangement - the details of which are being worked out - the county agency that oversees and monitors public mental health service would provide the clinic with a grant to remain open for at least the next few months, the agency's director said.

The state has banned the admission of new patients to a West Baltimore convalescent home after finding lapses in medical care, some of which were "potentially life-threatening," said Michael Golden, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.The state ordered the ban last Friday on the Lincoln Convalescent Center Inc., in the 1200 block of W. Fayette St., Golden said. If the home is unable to correct its problems within 90 days, he said, the state will move to decertify it from receiving Medicaid and Medicare funds.

Urban Behavioral Associates, which described itself as "the largest single-specialty minority-owned psychiatric group on the East Coast," has laid off some of its staff and is closing programs in Prince George's County. UBA has had difficulty submitting claims for treating Medicaid patients in a timely manner, said Oscar Morgan, director of mental hygiene for the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The state health department administers the Medicaid program. With Medicaid as an important payer, delayed claims could create cash-flow problems for UBA, which has its headquarters and operates a number of programs in Baltimore.

A review found hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of projects were awarded, without a competitive bid process, to four contractors to do maintenance work at Spring Grove Hospital Center, according to a special report released yesterday by the state's Department of Legislative Services. Spring Grove is the state's oldest and largest hospital, serving more than 1,000 patients a year on a 190-acre campus in Catonsville. The review, which spanned July 2005 to February 2008, found that projects were given to a particular contractor after Spring Grove officials had previously faxed the competing bids to the contractor.

Adele Wilzack, presenting herself as a registered nurse who knows little of accounting or managing, meekly took her medicine from the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee for the abuses and mismanagement of the Maryland State Games."

Gretchen Jane Hartman, a dietitian and former division chief for the state health department, died Tuesday at St. Joseph Medical Center of complications from surgery after a fall. She was 90 and had lived for about 15 years at Edenwald in Towson, where she was chairwoman of its food committee. Miss Hartman, who was known as Jane, was a Pittsburgh-area native who earned a bachelor's degree in nutrition from West Virginia University and a master's degree from Drexel University. After working for several years in Pennsylvania, Miss Hartman moved to Baltimore and worked for several years as Sinai Hospital's director of dietetics.

The superintendent of Spring Grove Hospital Center has been removed from his job because a state medical board placed him on probation for improperly writing prescriptions at his private psychiatric practice.Dr. Bruce L. Regan, administrator of the state's largest mental hospital since 1987, has been assigned to the Mental Hygiene Administration's division overseeing clinical services for mental hospitals, a health department spokesman said yesterday.Earlier this month, the state Board of Physician Quality Assurance found that Dr. Regan had prescribed narcotics in a manner "clearly outside the accepted standard of care."

An employee of the William Donald Schaefer Tower downtown was stricken with Legionnaires' disease, and several others with respiratory illnesses are being examined, but state officials were cautioning yesterday that they don't believe the building is contaminated. "Right now, what we have is one case," Gov. Martin O'Malley told reporters yesterday at a news conference inside the building. "If there were a second case in this building, that would tell us we have to go into a much deeper level of forensic examination."

State police are investigating the suspicious death of a patient at Crownsville State Hospital who was found early Sunday in the psychiatric ward.A member of the medical staff found the body of Soo-Jung Kyung, 36, at 12:20 a.m., said state police spokesman Michael McKelvin. Although there were no immediate signs of injury, the preliminary cause of death is blunt-force trauma to the head, he said."But that could mean anything from a fall to being hit with a baseball bat," Mr. McKelvin said.

More than 250 people opposing the state's plan to close its Crownsville mental hospital argued last night that shutting the 90-year-old facility will produce more costs than savings. "This is not rocket science. I'm not even an accountant. I'm a social worker," said Michael McGuiness, who works at a drug treatment center that leases space in the hospital complex. "You're looking in the wrong direction." Officials have said closing the 200-bed Crownsville Hospital Center would save more than $11 million next year.