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Patient escapes new psychiatric hospital

Healthcare Security Weekly, November 15, 2004

A female patient escaped Maine's new $31 million psychiatric hospital in Augusta last week, the Morning Sentinel reported.

The patient piled folding tables in order to climb to the roof of Riverview Psychiatric Center from a reportedly secure courtyard.

The hospital was designed as a high-security facility. However, the facility doesn't have prison-style walls, fences, or barbed wire, but an internal courtyard surrounded by glass.

"There was a woman who used some folding tables that were left out there by staff after a program in the common area," Newell Augur, director of legislative and public affairs for the Department of Health and Human Services, told the Sentinel. "We have spoken to the head of that unit and affirmed that they need to remove all the tables out there as soon as their program is over."

The woman returned the next day.

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