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Before his ouster one month into the job, Oregon State Hospital superintendent Sean Murphy had identified fixing the staffing problems that plague the institution as a key priority, according to a union leader there.
In an interview, AFSCME Local 3295 president David Lynch, who has worked as a nurse at the locked psychiatric hospital for years, recalled Murphy making the rounds to different units, gathering feedback from workers and making clear that he was hearing a particular complaint loud and clear: Staffing levels at Oregon State Hospital were insufficient and unsafe.
Lynch recalled Meyer suggesting this would no longer slide and communicating a need to act swiftly.
“And then he’s fired,” Lynch said.
On Wednesday, the Oregon Health Authority abruptly removed Murphy from the top job at the state’s vital, much scrutinized center for acute psychiatric care, just weeks into a tenure that began July 13 amid optimist rhetoric.
In public comments and an email to staff, the health agency did not offer a rationale for the firing, but wrote that the hospital “requires strong, trusted, accountable leadership”—and that “because of this, superintendents are held to the highest standards possible.”
Murphy could not be reached for comment on this story, but previously told The Lund Report, which covers health care in Oregon, that he and state health leaders were “not able to align on the approach and level of change I believed was necessary to improve safety and operations.” He noted the layers of bureaucracy and outside contractors that made it difficult to respond nimbly to the 24/7 hospital’s needs, adding that he and others in the agency “had different views about how to accomplish that work and how quickly change needed to occur.”
A day later, AFSCME Local 3295 sent a letter to Jim Diegel, whom OHA installed as interim superintendent. The letter raised concerns about staffing levels. WW has not independently confirmed allegations in the letter, which describes rising rates of workplace injuries, increasing physical and emotional strain on caregivers, and growing risks to patient safety.
“For an extended period, the hospital has knowingly failed to consistently meet required staffing levels,” the letter said. “Rather than treating safe staffing as a legal or moral obligation to patients and caregivers, management has repeatedly prioritized budgetary concerns above the staffing resources necessary to provide safe, quality care.”
The union asked Diegel to institute a comprehensive staffing plan with higher staffing standards to address “increasing incidence of workplace injuries” and to foster “a culture of collaboration and mutual respect in which front-line staff can raise concerns without dismissal or hostility.”
In a written statement, the Oregon Health Authority tells WW that safety is its top priority at the state hospital—and that the institution, in collaboration with union leaders, is piloting alternative staffing schedules to improve work-life balance for staff and help improve recruitment and retention.
Drawing $500 million annually, Oregon State Hospital is budgeted to employ more than 2,700 people between its two campuses in Salem and Junction City. The institution has churned through leaders in recent years as it faced deepening pressure from the courts to discharge patients more swiftly to make way for new ones, and amid scrutiny by the media, lawmakers, and accrediting bodies over its caretaking practices.
Long-standing issues with hiring and retention are well documented, though Lynch recalls a “three-legged stool” of measures hospital leaders took in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to address staffing shortages: National Guard members worked the floor as medical technicians, permanent workers got new incentives to stay on, and the institution relied heavily on travel nurses.
Now, he says, the troops are gone, staffing incentives have morphed, and since late last year, the hospital seems to have limited the use of travel nurses.
“It seemed like a switch was flipped out of the blue,” he said of the travel nursing shift. Before long, he said, the hospital was frequently failing to satisfy minimum staffing numbers outlined in its policies.
In March, the union sent its leaders a letter about the problem. In June, around the time OHA announced Murphy’s hiring, the agency’s then-director, Sejal Hathi, said Oregon State Hospital was shaping up. (She announced her resignation from the health authority in early July.)
Indeed, Murphy was presented as something of a “savior figure,” Lynch said. He recalled the new superintendent making the rounds in his opening weeks, talking to staffers in various units, and communicating his stark impression that unsafe staffing levels were a ubiqituous concern.
“That’s all he he kept talking about,” Lynch said, adding that “everything he was communicating to the workers, the AFSCME union, was exactly what we’ve been ringing alarm bells about for the past eight to 10 months.”
