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GOLDSBORO (AP) - The state mental hospital where a patient died after caretakers left him sitting in a chair for 22 hours can no longer receive federal funds, state regulators announced Thursday.

The decision by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to decertify Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro means the state won't receive $800,000 a month in Medicaid and Medicare treatment dollars.

The decision had been expected. The state Department of Health and Human Services said 10 days ago that inspectors who examined Cherry late last month would recommend decertification.

The announcement is another setback for the state's damaged mental health system, which has struggled to stabilize after reform legislation earlier this decade left pockets of the state without community treatment options and ultimately led to wasteful spending.

North Carolina mental health division co-director Leza Wainwright said the state has hired Ohio firm Compass Group Inc. to help the hospital fix the problems and get it re-certified.

"The state remains committed to providing inpatient psychiatric services to consumers in eastern North Carolina," Wainwright said in a prepared statement.

"The suspension of these funds will require an evaluation of the operational needs of the hospital."

The decertification follows a month of bad news at Cherry.

First, state officials disclosed in mid-August that a patient, 50-year-old Steve Sabock, had died April 29 after choking on medication and being left sitting in a chair for nearly 24 hours over the course of four work shifts.

Security cameras from the room where Sabock sat captured staff members playing cards and watching television.

Health and Human Services Secretary Dempsey Benton closed the hospital ward where Sabock died and removed staff members involved from caring for patients directly.

Two staff members also were accused of beating a different patient in August, at the same time Cherry leaders started patient care retraining to show investigators it was trying to fix problems.

The state will pay $90,000 to Compass Group to work through Oct. 15 to provide a plan to correct hospital problems and bring Cherry Hospital back into federal compliance standards, the department said in a news release.

Compass also is slated to provide management and training to ensure the plan is carried out.

Broughton state mental hospital in Morganton was decertified for 10 months until July while the state fixed problems related to patient safety, including a patient's death last year.