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Report cites multiple security problems at Oregon hospital

Healthcare Security Weekly, December 24, 2007

A state report released earlier this month found that a dozen forensic patients, some with very violent pasts, have escaped from the Oregon State Hospital in Salem in the last two years, reported the Associated Press (AP).

The report also detailed how other patients have smuggled in drugs, weapons, and other contraband and some developed romances with staff members.

Perhaps none of the incidents were as astounding as those of Gino Puglisi, a patient in the hospital's program for the criminally insane. He used pay phones to run up sports-gambling debts and to get help with his escape attempts, reported the AP. He got a cell phone, $1,000 cash, and hacksaw blades in the mail, according to a state police investigative report obtained by the Statesman Journal.

Puglisi, 39, escaped in February by cutting through a security fence with bolt cutters supplied by a hospital employee and was caught nine days later. In October, police arrested two people who drove to the hospital in a stolen car, which allegedly contained cutting tools and methamphetamine, apparently to help him escape again. He has since been transferred to the state prison system after conviction on drug charges stemming from the escape. "He was a handful," Maynard Hammer, the hospital's interim superintendent, told the Statesman.

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