Colorado's Pueblo hospital says its competency backlog is cleared after emergency spending
The Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo reported by late January 2016 that it no longer had defendants waiting for court-ordered evaluations. The Gazette reported that a shortage of advanced practice nurses, physician assistants and psychiatrists had cut admissions to about one a day by the previous June, and that Disability Law Colorado had alleged roughly 100 people were stuck in jails in October 2015.
The state credited $2.7 million in emergency funding, a contractor providing competency services inside jails, University of Colorado forensic psychiatry fellows and patient transfers to the Fort Logan hospital. The department said it would seek $4.1 million for the next fiscal year to keep staffing adequate.
Disability Law Colorado entered mediation while it reviewed documents to confirm the backlog was gone.
Source: State says there is no longer a backlog of court-ordered competency evaluations — The Gazette (Colorado Springs), by Jakob Rodgers
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