Page 45 - BusinessWest April 14, 2021

behavioral-health expansion. One is that HMC, Baystate, and Providence would have been pro- viding around 225 beds within a three-mile radi- us of each other, and though the need for servic- es is great statewide, there’s only so far patients and families will be willing or able to go to seek access to treatment — not to mention the dif- ficulty of recruiting more physicians, nurses, and ancillary staff to such a concentrated area.
‘parked’ for the moment, not abandoned com- pletely, 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 finan- cially; we can’t take a $45 million risk.”
Baystate currently has 69 behavioral-health beds at three of its affiliate locations: 27 at Bay-
are increasing, as are instances of anxiety and depression, including in young people (see story on page 4). Meanwhile, the workforce of psycho- therapists 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 popula- tion. “We see a large number of kids taken care of on medical 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 deep- er 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 determine what makes sense for the region,” he said. “That still has purpose now. Let’s decide 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 meeting 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.” u
Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]
“We were concerned about providing a solution to get beds online as the state was developing guidelines for all hospitals to incentivize an increase in
SPIROS HATIRAS ” behavioral-health beds.
state Wing Hospital, 22 at Bay- state Franklin Medical Center, and 20 at Baystate Noble Hospi- tal. When the new facility opens next fall, these three locations will close. A fourth location,
the Adult Psychiatric Treatment Unit at Baystate Medical Center (BMC), which accommodates up to 28 medically complex behav- ioral-health patients, will remain open. Kindred Healthcare will manage the day-to-day opera- tions of the behavioral hospital.
“We might find ourselves very quickly in a sit- uation where we might not be able to staff those beds. 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 build- ing 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 enthusiastic about it. I think we’re in really good shape.”
While the standalone hospital proposal is
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 insur- mountable,” he told BusinessWest. “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 inpatient realm of behavioral health need to be success- ful, Sarvet noted. For example, suicide rates
HEALTHCARE
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