SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The first group of patients is set to move from the decrepit Oregon State Hospital to a new state-of-the-art facility in Salem.
The Statesman Journal says that after a six-week delay, mostly to train new workers, about 50 patients are to move into a section of the new mental hospital on Monday. To celebrate, the maximum-security patients are getting together to watch Oregon play Auburn in the BCS national championship football game.
The entire 620 bed, $280 million facility is scheduled to be fully operational late this year. Patients are to be transferred in stages, as different sections of the hospital are completed.
The old hospital became a symbol of the psychiatric neglect portrayed in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which was filmed at the 127-year-old facility.
