Health briefs: Baystate opens temporary youth behavioral health unit
Workers construct a rapid response triage outside the Emergency Department at Baystate Health in Springfield, Monday, Mar. 16, 2020. GAzette file photo
Published: 5/3/2021 4:31:05 PM
Baystate Health opens temporary youth behavioral health unit
SPRINGFIELD Baystate Health opened a temporary 12-bed child/adolescent psychiatric unit on its Baystate Medical Center campus last week, as part of an effort to address the critical shortage of behavioral health services for children in the region.
“This new unit serves as a bridge allowing us to provide inpatient psychiatric care for children and adolescents over the next two years until our new Baystate-Kindred Healthcare joint venture behavioral health hospital opens with a permanent pediatric/adolescent unit,” said Dr. Barry Sarvet, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Baystate Health.
Baystate Health opens youth psychiatric unit as it begins partnership with Kindred Health on new hospital
Updated May 03, 2021;
Posted May 03, 2021
Dr. Barry Sarvet is a Baystate Health psychiatrist and chair of the psychiatry department at Baystate Medical Center. (Photo by Anne-Gerard Flynn, Special to The Republican)
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SPRINGFIELD Baystate Health has launched its partnership with for-profit Kindred Health Services with the opening of a temporary 12-bed child-and-adolescent behavioral health unit as the two continue plans for their $55 million, 150-bed psychiatric hospital,
The temporary unit restores inpatient pediatric psychiatric services to Western Massachusetts. Mercy Medical Center, part of Trinity Health Of New England, closed Providence Behavioral Hospital in June. The hospital had a 24-bed pediatric psychiatric unit that was the only one in the region.
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Baystate Health’s addition of psychiatric beds helps fill void (Editorial)
Updated Jan 27, 2021;
After Providence Behavioral Health closed its 74 inpatient psychiatric beds in Holyoke, it took with it 12 beds offered to children and teens. Imagine being told that your son or daughter, possibly suicidal, will be sent two hours away to Salem or, hopefully, relatively closer, Manchester, Connecticut.
And due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and a shortage of beds, those with serious mental health issues in need of hospitalization that can’t travel are facing long wait times which can add up to days – even weeks.
“There are not enough inpatient psychiatry hospital beds in the region, especially with the closing of services at Providence,” said Dr. Barry D. Sarvet, chair of Baystate Health’s department of psychiatry. “But even before it was closing, we did not have enough beds.”
City closer to sale of Holyoke Geriatric Authority property
The Holyoke Geriatric Authority, pictured here in September 2020. GAZETTE FILE PHOTO
Modified: 12/10/2020 4:09:45 PM
HOLYOKE The City Council is set to consider a new bid from Baystate Health and its partner Kindred Healthcare to purchase the former Holyoke Geriatric Authority property to construct a new behavioral health hospital.
At Tuesday’s meeting of the City Council’s Development And Government Relations Committee, the city’s director of planning and economic development, Marcos Marrero, presented the Baystate-Kindred offer to purchase the property at 45 Lower Westfield Rd. for $250,000. The four members of the committee voted unanimously to recommend approving that agreement, which will now go before the full council.