SAN ANTONIO — The chief executive officer of Laurel Ridge Treatment Center has stepped down as the psychiatric hospital faces the cut off Thursday of all federal funding for Medicare and Medicaid, sources told Public Health Watch.
Chief Medical Officer Benigno Fernandez sent a text message Wednesday to physicians affiliated with the hospital that Laurel Ridge’s chief financial officer, Chris Barela, would be serving as acting CEO, according to the text message shared with Public Health Watch.
Barela is replacing Ashley Sacriste, who assumed the post in July 2024.
“Our shared goal is to deliver exceptional patient care and regain CMS certification,” Fernandez wrote in the text, referring to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Fernandez, Barela and other officials with Laurel Ridge did not immediately respond to requests for comment. State health officials likewise did not respond.
CMS notified Laurel Ridge on April 15 that it was terminating the facility’s participation in the federal programs effective April 30, citing regulatory violations that posed “immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety.”
Public Health Watch first reported April 17 on the termination notice and the deaths of three patients at the hospital in 2025.
It was not immediately clear Thursday, as the federal cuts loomed, if all Medicare and Medicaid patients at the hospital had been moved to other facilities. An official with the Texas Health and Human Services Department told Public Health Watch that the state was working to find placements for those patients before the funding ended.
A spokesperson for Bexar County’s Center for Healthcare Services said the center was also working to relocate patients. Twenty-two patients assigned to the hospital through a Bexar County program were among those being relocated or discharged by end-of-day Thursday, the spokesperson said.
Laurel Ridge filed a lawsuit April 23 seeking a temporary halt to the termination of the federal contract, warning the results would be “catastrophic” and could force closure of the facility. On April 27, the facility notified staffers of “massive layoffs” on June 26, when 648 of the hospital’s 659 positions were set to be eliminated.
“The consequences of termination of Laurel Ridge’s Medicare participation will be catastrophic and irreversible,” according to the lawsuit. “Laurel Ridge will be forced to close the entirety of its inpatient services.”
A federal judge rejected the request for an emergency injunction on April 28.
Laurel Ridge operates a 330-bed facility on 29 acres in north-central San Antonio that it describes as “one of the largest freestanding psychiatric hospitals in the United States.” Three patients died last year, compared to just one death in the previous four years, according to a Public Health Watch review of police, state and federal records.
A dozen former hospital staffers who spoke to Public Health Watch said the deaths came after Sacriste took over as CEO and enacted policy changes that reduced staff-to-patient ratios.