The District has agreed to a detailed list of improvements for St. Elizabeths, the city’s public psychiatric hospital, as part of a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. Last year a Justice Department report found “widespread deficiencies” inside the Southeast facility, coming after a series of fatal incidents of patient-on-patient violence at the hospital. From the Post:

Announced by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) yesterday morning at St. Elizabeths, the agreement calls for treatment to be tailored to individual patients, for abuse and neglect of patients to be halted and for the hospital’s many health and safety hazards to be corrected.

The commitments, outlined in 41 pages, are strikingly basic, a reflection of the fundamental problems that authorities found at the hospital. But if the objectives seem simple, reaching them will not be, officials said yesterday.

“This is not an going to be easy,” said Stephen T. Baron, head of the Department of Mental Health, expressing a sentiment repeated more than once during the announcement.

But as the Washington Times also points out, a federal lawsuit against the District from University Legal Services is going forward anyway, in an effort to force the District to improve conditions at the hospital more quickly than the agreement announced today — which calls for safety problems to be resolved within one year, but up to three years for some of the treatment issues. Last month, ULS told the Times, one patient died at St. Elizabeths, another appeared starved to death and there were hundreds of assaults amid worsening conditions during the past year.

In the meantime, all we can do is hope Mayor Fenty is successful in following through on the agreement. Add this to the long, long list of major tasks facing the Mayor that we’ll have to include on his report card at the end of his first year.

Photo courtesy dc.gov