A patient at Western State Hospital, Washington's largest psychiatric hospital, was found dead on the campus Monday, after going missing the previous day.
Construction crews for a new hospital building on the Western State campus found the patient dead at their site Monday morning, according to a statement from the Department of Social and Health Services. The state agency, which oversees the hospital, said the patient had been missing since Sunday when they didn't return from an unsupervised outing on the hospital grounds.
Cynthia Shipley, a spokesperson for DSHS, said staff had been actively searching for the patient when they didn't return, but didn't immediately say how long the patient had been missing or whether staff checked the construction site.
Hospital leadership have been in touch with the person's family, and we are following our processes that take place when a patient passes away, Shipley said in an email.
The state is currently building a new 350-bed facility to house forensic patients, or those who come through the criminal court system.
State leaders had celebrated the new facility as a step forward amid ongoing safety challenges. The state hospital lost federal funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in 2018 due to safety violations.
State hospital leaders have said the new facility will likely allow them to address some of those changes, and potentially seek federal certification again. At a news conference in November, assistant DSHS Secretary Sean Murphy also said the new facility would be a more therapeutic setting that would help reduce assaults by patients.
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