(a) The department is designated and empowered as the agency of this state responsible for supervision and administrative control of: state facilities for the treatment of mental illness or the treatment of mental retardation; state hospitals for the treatment of tubercular patients; state hospitals or institutions for the care, custody, and treatment of alcoholics; and other facilities or institutions which now or hereafter come under the supervision and administrative control of the department. With respect to all such facilities or institutions, the department shall have the following powers and duties:

(1) To create all necessary offices, appoint and remove all officers of such facilities or institutions, prescribe and change the duties of such officers from time to time, and fix their salaries as provided for by the pay plan covering positions under the State Merit System of Personnel Administration and in accordance with rules and regulations of the State Personnel Board, except that the commissioner shall not be subject to the State Merit System of Personnel Administration or the rules and regulations of the State Personnel Board. The department shall discharge and cause to be prosecuted any officer or other person who shall assault any patient in any of such facilities or institutions or who shall knowingly use toward any such patient any other or greater force than the occasion may require;

(2) To refuse or accept and hold in trust for any such facility or institution any grant or devise of land or bequest or donation of money or other property for the particular use specified or, if no use is specified, for the general use of such facility or institution;

(3) To bring suit in its name for any claims which any such facility or institution may have, however arising;

(4) To appoint police of such facilities or institutions who are authorized, while on the grounds or in the buildings of the respective facilities or institutions to make arrests with the same authority, power, privilege, and duties as the sheriffs of the respective counties in which such facilities or institutions are situated. If because of the contagious or infectious nature of the disease of persons arrested facilities are not available for their detention, such police shall be authorized to confine such persons within the respective facilities or institutions pending trial as provided in other cases. After trial and conviction of any such person, he shall be sentenced to serve his term of sentence in the penal ward of the facility or institution;

(5) To have full authority to receive patients ordered hospitalized in such facilities or institutions pursuant to any law, to receive any voluntary patients, to discharge such patients pursuant to law, to contract with patients or other persons acting on behalf of patients or legally responsible therefor, and in general to exercise any power or function with respect to patients provided by law. It is the intent of the General Assembly to provide always the highest quality of diagnosis, treatment, custody, and care consistent with medical practice and knowledge. It is the further intent of the General Assembly that the powers and duties of the department with respect to patients shall be administered by persons properly trained professionally for the exercise of their duties, consistent with the intention expressed in this Code section.

(b) The board is empowered to prescribe all rules and regulations for the management of such facilities and institutions not conflicting with the law.