Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Belmont Pines is planning an addition that will give it 15 more beds.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN — Area mental health services providers are scrambling to find beds for their clients, particularly adolescents, since Forum Health closed its children’s behavioral in-patient unit at the end of 2007.
Discovery House, Forum’s outpatient/partial hospitalization program, closed Dec. 31, 2007. Its Youth Services unit closed Jan. 31.
Forum continues to offer adult behavioral medicine services at Northside Medical Center and adult and geriatric mental health programs at Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren.
Outpatient Services Comprehensive Psychiatry Specialists, a Forum Health Services entity, will continue to offer outpatient mental health services for children, adolescents, adults and families at 955 Windham Court in Boardman.
But it is the loss of the 14 to 15 in-patient beds at Forum that concerns Ronald Marian, executive director of the Mahoning County Mental Health Board.
After Forum closed its children’s behavioral unit, D&E Counseling, an agency funded by the mental health board, encountered a situation where an adolescent needed inpatient care. There were no beds at Belmont Pines Hospital for behavioral health patients in Liberty, and D&E was able to make arrangements with Laurelwood Hospital in Willoughby.
“I’m looking for beds from here to Cleveland” as back-up in case Belmont Pines is full, Marian said.
Recognizing the potential scarcity of in-patient beds, Belmont Pines, 615 Church Hill-Hubbard Road, is planning an addition that will give it 15 more beds, 10 for acute in-patient cases, and five for residential cases.
The typical hospital stay of acute care patients is five to six days. The typical stay in the residential facility is six months, said George Perry, Belmont Pines chief executive officer.
Perry said the Belmont Pines addition has been proposed to its parent company, Psychiatric Solutions in Nashville, Tenn., and he expects confirmation in March.
Assuming the project is approved, the new beds would be available in late spring of 2009, Perry said.
Perry said that as far as he knows there was only one day when Belmont Pines did not have enough beds, and the next day the hospital was able to take patients, he said.
“But we want to make sure there are enough beds” to serve the area, he said.
Currently, Belmont Pines has 81 beds, including 36 for acute care patients, and 45 residential.
“We’re trying to work with Belmont Pines to make sure that D&E and Turning Point clients, most of whom are on Medicaid, have a place to go,” Marian said.
alcorn@vindy.com