'A desperate situation': Mat-Su hospital downsizes planned mental-health facility to bring it online faster
Alaska Dispatch NewsFeb 25, 2019
Now work is starting next month on a much smaller -- and less costly --
It's unclear whether the hospital will go ahead with the larger facility in the future.
Hospital administrators say starting with fewer beds allows them to bring services to an underserved community that can't wait two years.
"We strongly felt we had to do something much more quickly than that," said
'Unmet need' in Mat-Su
The Matanuska-Susitna Borough is the state's fastest-growing area, located about an hour north of
And like hospitals across the state,
Hospital administrators across the state describe a mental health "crisis" spurred by overcrowding at API -- the state this month announced a transition to for-profit administration -- as well as opioid and other drug and alcohol addictions adding additional pressure.
Scrambling to find acute, inpatient behavioral health beds,
Statewide, there's an eight-day average wait for acute psychiatric inpatient services, said Allison, who came to Mat-Su from the Providence system. "We're all on the same list, waiting for the same beds."
It might seem surprising, then, to curtail plans for a larger facility in Mat-Su given an overloaded system that led hospital administrators to set aside four emergency rooms for patients who might be a danger to themselves or others.
But people on the front lines of mental health and addiction battles here praise the speedy addition of any new beds.
"The idea they could bring psychiatric beds online much faster, even though it was at a reduced number, is something that is very welcome to us," said
The community health center provided 133 percent more evaluations in 2018 than the year before, Munson said. He described patients waiting in the ER for days.
The statewide lack of psychiatric hospital beds is exacerbated in Mat-Su by population growth, advocates say. Residents here need local behavioral health beds that provide immediate care as well as access to local support networks: Patients getting referrals in
"The reality is that the Valley has grown so phenomenally that the pressure for this kind of service has been there, it's been kind of an unmet need, for decades," Munson said.
A new investment
The new unit is under construction on the hospital's third floor in a wing separate from a
Combined with a recently completed medical office plaza, the hospital expansion represents the largest investment in health-care facilities in the area since the hospital was built in 2006, according to
Tagging onto the third-floor expansion, in an unfinished shell built when the hospital was, allowed the more rapid addition of the behavioral health beds, hospital officials say.
The planned behavioral health wing wasn't funded with government money or grants, Craft said.
"If we didn't believe in this, we wouldn't have invested in it," he said.
Shifting culture
Work on the new mental health unit is expected to start next month and wrap up by August, said Allison, the behavioral health director. The hospital is also hiring numerous staffers, from nurses and behavioral health technicians to clinicians and psychiatrists.
Once it's done, adult patients who show up in the ER with acute behavioral health needs can be admitted and brought up to the third-floor unit via a secure elevator. Patients will come via direct referrals from providers, admissions made in the emergency department, and involuntary or court-ordered admissions. The unit will offer group therapy, family meetings and case management.
"We really believe that it will be filled near capacity right away," said
The new unit won't provide set-aside beds for drug or alcohol detox, Allison said, but will see patients with "dual diagnosis" behavioral health issues that may include drug or alcohol substance use disorders.
Opiate-related issues surface in about two-thirds of the patients exhibiting drug withdrawal or overdose symptoms in the emergency department, according to
True North does 30 to 45 consults at the hospital a month, said Soderstrom, who credits the hospital's recognition of the need for mental health and substance abuse services in an acute-care setting. A
"The culture really is shifting," he said.
Future facility? No guarantee.
Mental health advocates in Mat-Su say the need continues for as many psych beds as possible.
The hospital "didn't simply just pluck" the original 36-bed number from the air, notes Munson at
"While the 16 beds are going to be of enormous help and will make a big dent in it and add a needed resource, it's not going to be very long in the future before those 16 beds are not meeting the need," he said.
It's still possible that the hospital could build the stand-alone unit, officials say. But they're planning to wait to see how the situation unfolds at API, and what level of demand they see at the smaller unit.
"It's not off the table," Craft said.
If they opt to proceed, the hospital will need a new certificate of need through a state program that makes sure expanded health-care services are justified in communities.
The state approved a certificate for the larger behavioral health facility in
The state certificate of need program made it clear that the hospital would need to go back through the entire process to bring more psych beds online, said program coordinator
"There is no guarantee that they would get those beds, and or someone else could apply for them," Hicks said.
There's no indication other hospitals in Southcentral would step in.
A spokesman for
"It's just kind of a desperate situation all around with these psych beds," Hicks said.
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