Opinion
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Finding a Way
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Published: October 6, 2008
It's good that Cannon Memorial Hospital in Linville has found a way to reopen its inpatient psychiatric-care unit, because the state's system of mental health-health care is seriously compromised. Let's hope Cannon's plan works — and encourages other local programs of its type.
The state's overhaul of its mental health-care system, which was supposed to shift the burden of providing that care from the state psychiatric hospitals to private-care providers in communities, failed miserably, largely because of poor planning. As state officials try to overhaul their overhaul, local entities such as Cannon Memorial have had to struggle to help all the vulnerable patients the state left in the lurch. Those with mental problems have ended up in emergency rooms, homeless shelters and jails. Other patients have landed back in the state psychiatric hospitals, which have sometimes provided inadequate care.
The struggle to provide mental-health care has been especially hard in rural areas, where services for such care were already limited. After Cannon Memorial closed its inpatient psychiatric unit in 2005 because of financial difficulties, the closest inpatient psychiatric units had been a half-hour's drive and longer away.
The re-opening of the Cannon Memorial unit should help a lot by serving patients from a 16-county area that includes Ashe, Alleghany, Avery, Watauga and Wilkes counties. The program, called the Kate B. Reynolds Inpatient Behavioral Health Unit, will take referrals from other counties when it has the space. And while the previous program at the hospital was for geriatrics, the new one will serve adults up to age 65.
Cannon had closed its psychiatric-care unit because the reimbursement system then in place made it hard for the unit to break even. It's reopening the unit through a pilot program involving Broughton Hospital, the state-run psychiatric hospital in Morganton. The state has provided money to Smoky Mountain Mental Health, which will contract with Cannon Memorial for mental-health care, the Journal's Monte Mitchell recently reported. The program is aimed at providing more state support to community-care providers in an effort to reduce admissions to the state psychiatric hospitals.
Cannon Memorial will continue its outpatient behavioral health-care program.
We hope the new program works, and that it gives some needed relief to the mentally ill and their families. The state has failed them. For now, as state officials try to fix all the problems the overhaul of this system created, the best hope is for programs like the one at Cannon Memorial.
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