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MENTAL HEALTH CONT’D
Can we attract staff to this area? That’s always been difficult for Western Mass.,” Hatiras said, another reason why a smaller- scale project makes sense right now.
“I’m optimistic about the units we’re building coming online quickly and providing some relief,” he said. “It’s a good project, and we have a good track record in behavioral health. We know we can run it well, and the state has been very enthusi- astic about it. I think we’re in really good shape.”
While the standalone hospital proposal is ‘parked’ for the moment, not abandoned completely, HMC has to be sure something of that scale would be both necessary and practical before moving forward, Hatiras added. “We’re a small community hospital. A project can’t be something that may or may not succeed financially; we can’t take a $45 million risk.”
“I’m optimistic about the units we’re building coming online quickly and providing some relief.”
Baystate currently has 69 behavioral- health beds at three of its affiliate locations: 27 at Baystate Wing Hospital, 22 at Baystate Franklin Medical Center, and 20 at Bay- state Noble Hospital. When the new facility opens next fall, these three locations will close. A fourth location, the Adult Psychi- atric Treatment Unit at Baystate Medical Center (BMC), which accommodates up
to 28 medically complex behavioral-health patients, will remain open. Kindred Health- care will manage the day-to-day operations of the behavioral hospital.
Sarvet firmly believes Baystate will able to fully staff the new venture.
“We do have a nursing shortage, so this will present a challenge, but I don’t think it’s insurmountable,” he told HCN. “We’ll work very hard to include people from the region and hire locally, but we might need a wider net to bring people in. We are very confident we’ll be able to be successful.”
Not Waiting Around
In fact, all the local players in the inpa- tient realm of behavioral health need to
be successful, Sarvet noted. For example, suicide rates are increasing, as are instances of anxiety and depression, including in young people (see story on page 4). Mean- while, the workforce of psychotherapists
and clinicians in outpatient settings haven’t been operating at full capacity — again, partly due to the pandemic and the shift to remote treatment settings.
Like HMC, Baystate isn’t waiting for a new building to expand certain aspects of behavioral care. It will open a 12-bed child unit at Baystate later this month, which will expand to a 24-bed unit in the new hospital next year, in response to a shortage of beds specifically for that population. “We see a large number of kids taken care of on medi-
cal floors, waiting for beds, up to several weeks,” Sarvet said.
All this movement is positive, Hatiras noted, though he does wish that leadership from HMC, Baystate, and Providence had engaged in deeper conversations about the region’s long-term behavioral-health needs and how to meet them before the recent rush of project launches and changes, bed closings, and ownership transitions.
“Let’s talk as a regional team and deter- mine what makes sense for the region,” he
said. “That still has purpose now. Let’s de- cide what makes sense in these areas before we build 250 beds and can’t staff them, or half of them sit empty.”
For his part, Sarvet agrees that the meet- ing the region’s inpatient behavioral-health needs is not a solo effort. “We don’t want to win the battle; we want all hospitals to be staffed. We’re in a friendly competition, and we want everyone to win.” v
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