Area psychiatric unit gets state funds at last
Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/234208/
SPRINGDALE — Acutely ill mental patients in need of overnight stays once again will have access to Medicaid-funded beds in Northwest Arkansas, officials said Wednesday in announcing the long-awaited release of state funding.
The announcement of more than $ 2 million in General Improvement Fund money means a restoration of beds the region lost in 2002, and then some, for a 29-bed Springdale unit expected to open in January.
And an additional $ 800, 000 went to Booneville in Logan County as start-up money for a planned 25-bed psychiatric unit. Another $ 80, 000 will go to help a Little Rock clinic add four mental health beds.
The bulk of the $ 2, 944, 000 funds a partnership among the state’s medical school, a mental health center and three hospitals in Washington and Benton counties, and a nonprofit that all have made the Springdale project possible.
The funding will allow the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences to expand its psychiatric residency program into the state’s northwest corner, where it will operate the 29-bed psychiatric unit in partnership with Northwest Medical Center-Springdale.
In April 2002, the Springdale hospital — then under different leadership — closed Highland Hall, a 20-bed unit, leaving the area without Medicaid-covered beds for adults in need of acute mental health care.
Mental health providers have said that Medicaid pays for inpatient psychiatric care for those ages 22-64 as long as they are in a general hospital setting, which includes the State Hospital in Little Rock.
Some mentally ill patients have private insurance or Medicare and can be admitted to private, freestanding psychiatric hospitals if there’s available bed space. Many others must rely on either the State Hospital or general hospitals with psychiatric units. Fewer beds mean patients end up in Arkansas’ jails, emergency rooms and homeless shelters — or displacing mental patients in need of intermediate levels of care.
“Sometimes we’d send them down to Little Rock or over to Oklahoma — wherever we could get a bed,” said Tom Petrizzo, chief executive officer of Ozark Guidance Center Inc. in Springdale, which will serve as the conduit for state funds for the Springdale project.
Since Highland Hall’s closure, more than a half-dozen attempts to restore the Medicaid beds have failed.
In August 2005, Ozark Guidance learned that Washington Regional Medical System in Fayetteville wouldn’t commit to being the center’s sole partner in opening and operating a 16-bed unit at its former hospital campus.
Later that year, Ozark Guidance’s then-CEO David L. Williams said his center was in talks with Washington Regional Medical Center, Northwest Medical Center-Springdale, what was then St. Mary’s Hospital in Rogers and the former Gravette Medical Center Hospital. His goal was to secure multiple partners who could share the burden of caring for the most ill patients.
On Wednesday, officials announced a six-partner coalition for the Springdale mental health unit and their responsibilities: Northwest Health System, the Springdale hospital’s parent, will renovate a vacant floor in the hospital’s north tower, most likely the fourth floor, using $ 1. 9 million of the state funds it will get, said spokesman Greg Russell. The system also will provide nursing and support staff for the psychiatric unit and infrastructure support. UAMS’ Psychiatric Research Institute in Little Rock, headed by Dr. G. Richard Smith, will provide direct patient care and program oversight. The program will be used as a teaching site for UAMS psychiatric residency and fellowship programs. The institute also will establish an out-patient clinic to serve pre- and post-admission needs of some of the main unit’s patients.
Ozark Guidance, in addition to serving as fiscal intermediary, will provide screening, consultation services, and pre- and postadmission outpatient services. The center will help Northwest Health provide indigent services for those needing acute care.
Care Foundation Inc., a nonprofit in Springdale that helped assemble the coalition, will provide up to $ 415, 000 in start-up costs during the first two years. It will coordinate an advisory group to routinely review the program’s operation and results “as a safety net,” according to the foundation. The foundation was established in 1998, when the sale of Northwest Health System resulted in the transfer of assets into an endowment for the community. Washington Regional Medical Center and Mercy Health System of Northwest Arkansas each will provide up to $ 65, 000 a year to cover the physical health-care needs of the program’s low-income mental patients.
Gov. Mike Beebe had planned to make Wednesday’s announcement in Springdale, but news shortly after noon of the shooting of Bill Gwatney, chairman of the Democratic Party of Arkansas, prompted the governor’s plane to turn around about 10-15 minutes into the flight and return to Little Rock, said Beebe’s spokesman, Matt DeCample.
Officials in Springdale canceled and rescheduled the news conference a couple of times before deciding to go ahead, though they said the Little Rock news dampened the celebration they had planned.
Of the $ 2, 064, 000 released for the Springdale project, $ 1, 031, 000 came from the governor’s share of the General Improvement Fund from the 2007 legislative session and $ 579, 000 came from the Legislature’s share of the 2007 funds, Petrizzo and Russell said. Another $ 454, 000 in legislators’ general improvement money made up the remainder of the released funds. That money had been set aside in the 2005 session before Washington Regional’s withdrawal derailed the original plan.
For the Booneville project, Beebe pitched in $ 500, 000 of his GIF share and the Legislature kicked in nearly $ 300, 000.
Pete Kennemer, chief executive officer of Western Arkansas Counseling and Guidance Center in Fort Smith, said the released money will give Booneville officials a start on plans for 25 new psychiatric beds, a project that falls in his center’s six-county coverage area.
When Booneville Community Hospital moved into a new building, it left its old home vacant on the same campus, Kennemer said.
As a federally designated “critical care access” hospital, the hospital can operate 25 beds maximum, but it got approval to operate 10 additional mental health beds without jeopardizing its status. His center would operate the other 15 so long as a federal grant and a state grant come through, he said.
Kennemer said he’s never seen a community put out the welcome mat for such a project for the disadvantaged as had Booneville, which lost 800 jobs when a fire gutted its Cargill Inc. meat plant on Easter Sunday.
Booneville will get a reward for its big heart when the acutecare mental unit puts out helpwanted notices, he predicted.
“We think we can restore at least 25 percent of the jobs that were lost.”
The crisis unit at the Little Rock Community Mental Health Center got $ 80, 000, which it will use to add four psychiatric beds to the eight it already has, said Thomas Grunden, the center’s executive director.
That will make 12 beds for the center serving patients one step down in intensity from the acute level, he said.
“This is for people we would see in emergency rooms that, after screening, would not require hospital inpatient care but would need supervision for a period of stabilization,” Grunden said, adding his center is often a next step for someone emerging from acute care. “The general length of stay in a crisis center is three to five days.”
Williams and other advocates have said no region of the state offers a full range of care for psychiatric patients, meaning one region may be overwhelmed by intermediate patients and another by acute patients. No one hospital offers the holistic treatment — for mind, body and substance abuse problems — that patients often need to recover.