Controversy over the new, proposed health care bill has been played out on the national stage for some time now, but local mental health providers may have a different kind of crisis on their hands. The University of Virginia will soon end its agreement with Martha Jefferson Hospital (MJH), where 20 beds in the psychiatric unit currently at the hospital will be eliminated and not replaced. UVA will retain its 20 beds currently at the Medical Center.
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UVA’s agreement with Martha Jefferson Hospital (MJH) will end in June 2010. By then, 20 beds in the psychiatry unit at MJH will be eliminated. “We will lose the community base value of UVA when they reduce their beds, because that is such a plus to have an individual close to home and in the community,” says Robert Johnson, executive director of Region Ten. |
“The 20 beds at MJH will no longer be available to us because there will no longer be a MJH at its current location,” says Peter Jump, director of public relations for UVA Medical Center, in a statement. In fact, MJH will be fully moved in to its new location on Pantops by 2012. Meanwhile, MJH is in negotiations with a developer for the future of its current 13.6-acre Downtown campus, the biggest city project in decades.
According to UVA, eight beds will be eliminated in September and the rest sometime next spring. “Not all beds at UVA or MJH facility are used, so we should be able to consolidate the need at UVA,” says Jump.
Anticipating the loss of 20 beds by June 2010, local mental care providers like Region Ten are assessing the potential impact.
Martha Jefferson Hospital declined to comment for this article.
Region Ten Executive Director Robert Johnson says the impact of fewer beds will inevitably be felt. “There continues to be a lot more demand than there is capacity, and what’s happening now with the state budget cuts is pretty dramatic, is pretty devastating. What is happening is the door is narrowing, there is just not enough capacity to handle it.”
Region Ten has also been hit by budget cuts. Just recently, the mental health provider was forced to cut 11 positions to make way for any additional reduction the state is proposing.
Layoffs also occurred with earlier reductions in the agency’s budget.
For Johnson, the problem lies in providing quick and efficient care for all patients. If a patient needs a high level of care, one that Region Ten and its Crisis Stabilization Center cannot provide, emergency services will begin searching for an available bed, often across the state. With fewer local beds, Johnson says, the time between intake and placement of a patient increases, which, in turns, is detrimental to an individual who is in distress.
“I think we are going to probably overwhelm the state facilities, in particular Western State Hospital,” says Johnson. “We will lose the community base value of UVA when they reduce their beds, because that is such a plus to have an individual close to home and in the community.”
John Beghtol, director of community services for Western State Hospital, agrees. “There will definitely be an impact on Western State,” he says. “You are losing [20] beds out of your community resource from Martha Jefferson, it’s huge.”
Western State Hospital, a 260-bed state facility, offers admissions to patients between the age of 18 to 64. According to Beghtol, the majority of patients at MJH are geriatric. Yet, in the month of June alone, nine Region Ten patients were admitted to Western State. For the fiscal year that just ended, 69 Region Ten patients were admitted and the median stay for those patients was 224 days.
Buzz Barnett, director of Emergency Services for Region Ten, says that there is a substantial need for geriatric beds. “The loss of geriatric beds is going to be really felt heavily by families, by assisted living facilities and nursing homes that have relied heavily on the services that UVA provides,” he says.
According to Barnett, there seems to be a trend, nationally, to think that when psychiatric beds are shrinking, “the community can absorb the services that people need,” he says. “I don’t think we have the capacity in Charlottesville to serve the people who would have been receiving services in in-patient settings, we don’t have the capacity to help them out in a way that they need right now.”
When the Charter Hospital, a private, for-profit facility, closed in February 2000, 36 beds were lost. “The number of beds over the last decade here has shrunk in a major fashion. It’s a bit severe if you ask me,” says Barnett.
UVA says that it is “assessing the demand for beds and how many employees are needed to provide care to patients and we will continue to do so as our arrangement with MJH comes to an end.” As for staff members working in the psych unit at MJH, UVA plans to offer them positions in the Medical Center. “UVA always offers career advice assistance to any employee that wants to apply for positions outside of UVA.”
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