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General News: Mental Health Unit to Close in March
February 11, 2009
The mental health unit of St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital will stop accepting new patients on March 1st and hospital officials expect the unit to discharge its final patient and close by the end of March. The 22-bed unit is located at the Cornwall campus of the hospital.
The hospital’s chief financial office, Beth Duffy, said that the unit is being closed because it faces multi-million dollar losses and no government financial support for the services it offers. Duffy noted that many mental health patients are uninsured or underinsured and create significant deficits for the hospital.
The nearest facility offering mental health treatment is Orange Regional Medical Center in Goshen.
Cornwall police chief Todd Hazard says that closing the mental health unit is a mixed blessing for his department. On one hand his officers will no longer have to respond to calls for assistance with patients in the unit, but at the same time, they will have to transport people seeking mental health care to Orange Regional Medical Center, tying up an officer for at least two hours, he said.
In its announcement about the closing, the hospital noted that inpatient services for the mentally ill have been sharply declining for several years. It pointed to the closure in 2006 of the Middletown Psychiatric Center in 2006 and cited a 2008 report by the Healthcare Association of New York State that reported that in 1955, the state’s psychiatric hospital system had more than 90,000 beds and today it has approximately 5,000.
Comments:
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they need a lobbyist and bumper stickers: "I'm crazy and I vote" You can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its vulnerable and less able members.
posted by Kate Benson on 02/11/09 at 9:38 PM
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No surprise here- but what happened to the Medicaid certification Cornwall had? Did "someone" let it lapse? Also- if units are closing due to "a sharp decline in the inpatient services" the entire hospital should close it's doors now since their has not been quality care for all inpatients for many years. The future for the hospital is clear as a Cancer Treatment Center- but I sure hope it's staffed with better, caring people when that change comes.
posted by Diane Parodi on 02/12/09 at 3:00 PM
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Dr. Ernest Stillman must be spinning in his grave.
posted by Judith Jamros on 02/12/09 at 4:38 PM
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oh, the irony - on this same page was the SLCH ad, "Your health, our passion" they need to add another line: "... as long as you've got money" There is more of a cancer here than can be treated at the new center.
posted by Kate Benson on 02/14/09 at 8:25 PM
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