Fight for control of Eastern State Hospital
A key lawmaker says that plans to build a new $129 million Eastern State Hospital in Lexington, and to swap several tracts of land around the city as part of the deal, are still alive despite an e-mail warning to the contrary sent Thursday by the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Lexington.
In a lengthy e-mail to Gov. Steve Beshear and many legislators, NAMI accused Rep. Jimmie Lee -- who engineered the deal -- of calling the group this week and angrily threatening to kill the new mental-health hospital over the question of who would run it.
NAMI wants the nonprofit Bluegrass Regional Mental Health-Mental Retardation Board to be guaranteed the management contract at the new hospital, and the Senate budget bill includes such language. Lee wants the contract to be open to competition, and the House budget bill reflects that.
“WE should not have to choose between a new hospital and the care we trust!!! ... PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE ... help us and don’t let this absolutely righteous project be ruined,” NAMI Executive Director Kelly Gunning wrote in her e-mail. “We have basically been threatened with ‘no hospital.’” Gunning said Friday that her e-mail account is accurate.
That’s untrue, Lee said Friday. Lee, D-Elizabethtown, oversees the House budget for health and welfare.
“I have every intention of building a new Eastern State Hospital, because it’s important to the residents of the old facility and to their families,” Lee said.
Lee said he has angered some mental-health advocates because he’s uncomfortable writing into state law a guarantee that anyone must get a state contract without competition.
“I have nothing against Bluegrass,” Lee said. “I think Bluegrass has done a marvelous job. I hope they do a marvelous job in the new hospital. But I am not prepared to mandate that by statute.”
However, this isn’t a deal-breaker, Lee said. By the end of the ongoing House-Senate budget talks, he wants a new hospital, regardless of what compromises are reached, he said.
In fact, several for-profit companies are watching the Eastern State plan with an eye on bidding for the management contract if the legislature allows. One is The GEO Group of Boca Raton, Fla., which specializes in private prison and jail management. Lee confirmed that GEO has met with him.
“We would be very excited to submit a proposal,” said Jorge Dominicis, president of GEO Care, a GEO subsidiary that runs four civil psychiatric facilities for the state of Florida.
While Bluegrass may be doing a fine job now, “I just wonder aloud, why wouldn’t you want to find out what other people could offer you, what they could achieve for you,” Dominicis said Friday.
-- John Cheves
To say that the original proposal (the plan that excluded Bluegrass) was a win for Lexington, higher education and those with mental illness, was and is too simplistic and shortsighted. The proposal addressed a new building, extra parking, and new classrooms but left out the most important part; who was going to take care of the patients? Why would any plan leave out the non-profit Bluegrass Regional Mental Health-Mental Retardation Board, the very company that has SUCCESSFULLY taken care of the patients and their families for 13 years (and continues to do so). Since Bluegrass Regional Mental Health-Mental Retardation Board began managing the hospital in 1995, they have smoothly integrated inpatient services with outpatient services making the Central Kentucky Based company the most successful patient-oriented mental health SYSTEM in the nation. Bluegrass has saved the state millions of dollars each year since operating the hospital. Bluegrass continues to introduce and provide cutting edge mental health strategies/therapies such as DBT, and the Recovery Mall for the patients of Eastern State Hospital. From the outside, Eastern State Hospital is run down and decrepit. On the inside, amazing and miraculous things are happening with the help of staff who care, NAMI, the community, and Bluegrass Regional Mental Health-Mental Retardation Board. Why would you even consider bringing in a private FOR PROFIT organization with more of a history running prisons (and failing) than psychiatric hospitals. Bringing in a Private for Profit organization with a history of running prisons would only increase the stigma for patients with mental illness, their families and many advocates. I urge the Senate and House to truly bring all the pieces together by coming to a consensus on a plan that includes Bluegrass. The patients and their families deserve it. After all, you wouldn?t buy a USED CAR without a steering wheel would you?
Posted by: Marc Woods | March 28, 2008 at 02:27 PM
"Smoothly integrated inpatient services with outpatient services" ? Certainly not so for those people described in the January 31st Herald Leader article!
Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
2008-01-31
Section: Main News
Edition: Final
Page: A1
Out of Eastern State with nowhere to go Residence for Mentally Ill Proposed
Brandon Ortiz
Bortiz@herald-Leader.Com
They arrived in taxis, disheveled, disoriented and disgruntled. Nine mentally ill men were dropped at the door of the Catholic Action Center, 400 East Fifth Street, during an 18-day period in December. Some were paranoid. Others heard voices or hallucinated. All were broken souls thrown away by society.
Center director Ginny Ramsey said each one was too ill to make it on his own. But because Eastern State Hospital, the region's public hospital for the mentally ill, said it could no longer keep them, they had nowhere else to go.
That experience has led to an ambitious proposal that Ramsey is pitching to other faith-based charities, the city, Eastern State and social services agencies. Ramsey wants to a establish a home for the mentally ill who are not sick enough to stay at Eastern State, but too sick to be left to the streets.
"We need a place where these people can live with dignity and supervision," Ramsey said.
Her proposal is still in its infancy. While Ramsey has a site in mind for the center, she has no plan for how to pay for the expensive 24-hour supervised care that she envisions. That question could loom especially large because Eastern State's own plans to build a new hospital in Lexington were left out of Gov. Steve Beshear's new state budget proposal.
But the idea has generated discussion, and she has landed a meeting at Eastern State hospital to discuss her idea Thursday morning. Officials from the Bluegrass Regional Mental Health-Mental Retardation Board, Hope Center, Salvation Army and the city's Department of Social Services will attend, Ramsey said.
Officials with Mental Health-Mental Retardation, which manages Eastern State, want to hear what Ramsey has to say. It's more than just a courtesy meeting, said Tricia Salyer, vice president for institutional services.
Mental Health-Mental Retardation and other programs offer temporary and permanent housing for the mentally ill in Central Kentucky. But space is limited, Salyer said.
"There is a true need out there for a variety of housing," Salyer said. "We'd be delighted to work with them to see the full details."
Ramsey says her proposed site is ideally suited. Two empty buildings on the former Excepticon campus, once a home to the mentally handicapped, have 28 bedrooms and are not being used by Saint Martha's Episcopal Church, which owns the property.
The Rev. Bonnie Quantrell Jones said the church is interested. It already has a free clinic and a family counseling center on its campus, which is located on Trent Boulevard near Armstrong Mill Road.
"One of our core values is outreach to the community," Jones said. "This works perfectly with who we are and how we want to use the property."
State law, by design, makes it difficult for the government to involuntarily commit the mentally ill to institutions. The key threshold is that somebody must be a danger to themselves or others.
Once somebody is no longer dangerous, Eastern State is required, by law, to release them.
Ramsey brought the alleged taxi dumping to Eastern State's attention, and she said the situation has been resolved.
Salyer declined to discuss it. "Whatever we had going on has been discussed and resolved and is old news," Salyer said. "Let's move forward."
Ramsey said the Catholic Action Center has attempted to find places for the men to live. But some are still homeless.
Jones, who is also on the board of the Hope Center, says that facility has had some of the same experiences the Catholic Action Center had in December. But it's better for such men to be sent to the Hope Center than to be left on their own or forced to walk, she said.
The overwhelming majority of the mentally ill are not dangerous. And when they do have psychotic episodes, they generally subside after medication. But some are still not able to care for themselves, Ramsey said.
Absent institutionalization, there aren't many places for the severely mentally ill to stay if they don't have family, Ramsey said.
She said that creates a gaping hole in Kentucky's frayed social safety net. Unless they have a patient family, a sizable number of severely mentally ill people end up homeless, she said.
"It is just sad," Ramsey said. "These are thrown-away people, and they are just not able to manage."
Reach Brandon Ortiz at (859) 231-1443, 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 1443.
Posted by: cassandra | March 28, 2008 at 05:13 PM