“Due to declining inpatient volumes, competition from local for-profit facilities, greater outpatient services in the community and inadequate reimbursement from governmental payers, the unit is unable to effectively sustain its operational costs,” said spokeswoman Elizabeth Long.
“We believe the low volume is due in part to the trend in health care to provide outpatient treatment to behavioral health patients.”
Fort Hamilton staff will continue to provide behavioral health evaluations for patients who come into the hospital’s emergency department, Long said. But EMS units will no longer bring patients from other communities who need mental health services to Fort Hamilton.
“This was a tough decision, one we didn’t want to make, but after trying a number of options, we just weren’t able to make the in-patient program viable,” said Ron Connovich, president of Fort Hamilton Hospital. “Throughout our decision-making process, we wanted to make sure that our community’s behavioral health needs were being met.”
Connovich said Fort Hamilton partners with several behavioral health agencies in the community so that behavioral health patients can receive care.
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Word of the unit's closing sparked dismay and disappointment on social media and raised concerns among local officials.
Butler County Commissioner Cindy Carpenter said hospital officials pledged to try and keep the unit open, but “I guess it simply couldn’t happen.”
“It’s sad. It’s just sad,” she said.
Shutting down the unit puts more pressure on the Butler County Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Services Board and the agencies that support people with mental health issues by treating them on an outpatients basis, Carpenter said.
Carpenter said she and Sojourner Recovery Services proposed a crisis intervention center in Butler County last year “so that there is a place for police officers and individuals in the community to take someone who is having a crisis to be dealt with.”
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“It’s a challenge for emergency rooms right now,” she said. “It’s going to put a big burden back on the communities. We will have people with serious mental health issues … causing problems with their families or whatever who really need to be stabilized. I’m really disappointed that that happened.”
Rhonda Benson, executive director for the Butler County chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), said she believes the closing of the unit will have a negative impact on the community because many patients would need to be taken to facilities further away than Hamilton, including Atrium Medical Center in Middletown and Kettering Behavioral Medicine Center in Moraine.
“It’s just going to be hard, I think, on everybody to have their folks moved so far away,” she said. “It’s not like there’s no options, it just decreases the beds available in the county and especially for the Hamilton area.”
Benson said another option is Beckett Springs in West Chester Twp., but that facility cannot accept Medicaid on its patients.
“That’s why Fort Hamilton has been such a critical component of our mental health care in this county, is because they can take Medicaid patients, and they have a psych unit, and now we’re really not going to have any Medicaid-taking psych units in Butler County,” she said. “Atrium will be the closest.”
Benson runs a crisis intervention program that trains police officers to find alternatives to jail for some people with mental illness.
“I think (the closure) is going to be harder on them because traditionally they have taken them to Fort Hamilton,” she said. “It’s going to become an issue for the police, also, because they’re going to have to figure out what to do with these folks.”
Kettering Health Network is a not-for-profit network of nine hospitals, 12 emergency departments, and 120 outpatient facilities serving southwest Ohio. Besides Fort Hamilton, the network’s hospitals are Kettering, Grandview, Sycamore, Southview, Greene Memorial, Soin, Troy and Kettering Behavioral Medicine.
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Kettering Health will continue to make referrals and partner with area agencies in Butler County and throughout southwest Ohio so that behavioral health patients can receive care, Long said. That includes Kettering Behavioral Medicine Center, part of Kettering Health Network.
Fewer than 25 staff members work in the in-patient and outpatient behavioral health unit.
“For those employees who wish to remain employed with Fort Hamilton Hospital and Kettering Health Network, every effort will be made to find them roles in the organization,” she said.
She said the patient volume for previous years and the cost to operate the unit each year were not available.
Greater Miami Services, which is owned by Community First Solutions, leases space from Fort Hamilton Hospital to offer mental health services at the hospital site. There are no anticipated changes to GMS, which operates separately from the hospital with funding from the Butler County Mental Health and Addiction Services Board, according to Community First spokeswoman Danielle Webb.
“Community Behavioral Health works closely with Fort Hamilton Hospital and other providers to support the behavioral health needs of our community,” Webb said. “We will assist with any patient support or transitions needed to ensure clients’ needs continue to be met.”
The story so far
What: Fort Hamilton Hospital will close its 20-bed in-patient behavioral health unit and outpatient service
When: Feb. 28
Why: Declining inpatient volumes, competition from local for-profit facilities, greater outpatient services in the community, and inadequate reimbursement from governmental payers, officials said.
What will continue: Fort Hamilton will provide behavioral health evaluations of patients who come into the emergency department
What will stop: EMS units will no longer bring behavioral health patients to Fort Hamilton's emergency department from area communities specifically because of hospital's inpatient unit.
SOURCE: Kettering Health Network
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