MyEagleNews.com
NEWS
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
A7
Juniper Ridge to shut down Nov. 9 Hospital board mulling severing
ties with management company
Psychiatric facility may shift to
secure residential treatment care
next year
Company provides
services and counsel
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
Juniper Ridge Acute Care Center, an inpa-
tient psychiatric facility in John Day, is shut-
ting down and laying off four nurses in the
face of financial losses with plans to shift to a
secure residential treatment facility.
Community Counseling Solutions CEO
Kimberly Lindsay said the facility would stop
admitting patients Oct. 26 and discharge the
remaining patients by Nov. 6.
Next year, she said Juniper Ridge would
begin taking patients who have been down-
graded from acute psychiatric care from the
Oregon State Hospital in Junction City.
Lindsay said there has been pressure put on
the state hospital to discharge acute psychiat-
ric patients to secure residential facilities.
She said the increase in the number of
acute care beds in the state will hinder Juni-
per Ridge’s ability to stay financially solvent.
Lindsay said the patients, deemed stable
and no longer a danger to themselves or others,
will be at Juniper Ridge for six months.
Lindsay said the funding to update the facil-
ity to a secure residential treatment facility
would be through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief
and Economic Security Act, which must be
spent by the end of the year.
She said construction will begin Nov. 9 to
expand the facility from 11 beds to 13. The
project is expected to be completed in roughly
three months.
Lindsay said there are currently between
seven and eight patients at the facility, which,
on average, has been running at 80-85%
capacity.
She said she wants the public to know, while
psychiatric patients are usually not allowed to
be out in public, secure residential treatment
patients are with a staff escort. Lindsay said one
staff member could supervise up to five resi-
dential patients under the state’s regulations.
However, she said, a patient could be required
to be with one staff member in public.
The residential patients are stepping down
to a lower level of care, intending to enter back
into society, she said.
She told the court she did not want to give
the wrong impression. At Lakeview Heights,
she said, there have been patients who have
“decompensated.”
“In a secure facility, the doors are still
locked,” Lindsay said. “We’re providing that
added layer of structure.”
In a psychiatric facility, she said they focus
on getting someone stable and getting the
patient on medication with stays between 14
to 16 days.
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
The Eagle/Steven Mitchell
Community Counseling Solutions CEO Kim-
berly Lindsay discusses the shift in care at Ju-
niper Ridge Acute Care Center Oct. 14 during a
session of Grant County Court.
Under the new model, there will be a ther-
apeutic component, including group and indi-
vidual counseling.
“Some of what we are doing with them in
the community is helping them be successful as
they’re stepping down to a lower level of care,
which 99% of them are going to do,” Lindsay
said.
She said she could help someone get a
food handler’s license, work with patients, put
together a budget or cultivate healthy eating
habits.
According to the county’s contract with CCS,
Lindsay said they could open the facility without
consulting with the public or county officials.
“It is CCS’ value to be thoughtful of the com-
munity’s interest,” Lindsay said. “Technically,
we could open, but that’s not who we are or what
we are about.”
Under the contract, she said, CCS provides
the public health department functions, outpa-
tient mental health, addiction services for people
without health insurance and developmental dis-
ability services for the county.
She said, when CCS built Juniper Ridge in
2011, they wanted community input, and if the
people had not desired the facility, they would
have moved on.
Lindsay said she does not know what to
anticipate from the community. She said, before
opening Juniper Ridge, people were mostly
behind having the facility in John Day.
However, she said, the differences in the
populations, where the secure residential
patients can be in the community with escorts,
might not sit well with some people.
If Juniper Ridge does not transition to a
secure residential facility, Lindsay said, it will
close completely.
Lindsay encouraged community mem-
bers to offer their thoughts at surveymon-
key.com/r/XW697HV. Comments can also
be emailed to juniperridge@ccsemail.org or
mailed to Kimberly Lindsay, P.O. Box 469,
Heppner, OR 97836.
The Blue Mountain Hos-
pital District board of direc-
tors are considering sever-
ing ties with its management
company amid criticism from
patients for long wait times to
see their providers, lost refer-
rals and generally poor cus-
tomer service.
The tipping point came
when the hospital’s manage-
ment placed longtime pro-
vider Shawna Clark on admin-
istrative leave for improperly
adding something to her med-
ical records.
Mary Ellen Brooks, a for-
mer board member when the
hospital district signed with
management firm Brim and
Associates 30 years ago, said
the hospital “got a lot of good
out of Brim.”
Brim merged with Prov-
ince Healthcare in 1995 and
moved its headquarters to Ten-
nessee. Since then, the com-
pany has gone through three
other mergers and a rebrand-
ing to HealthTechS3 in 2015.
“(Brim) provided us with
the same things that Health-
Tech is providing you with:
supplies and cost savings,”
she said. “But in those days,
Brim was a smaller organiza-
tion from Portland. They did
more for us, and they were
more hands-on.”
Brooks said she did not
come to the work session to
blame anyone. However, she
said, health care has grown,
and times have changed.
Brooks said, with the right
leadership, the district could
run the hospital independently.
“Their management sys-
tem does not work for Grant
County people,” she said.
“We have a population of
fewer than 8,000 people in
this whole county, and we live
here because we like the way
it is.”
Brooks said the county
The Eagle/Steven Mitchell
Mt. Vernon resident and for-
mer Blue Mountain Hospi-
tal District board member
Mary Ellen Brooks during the
board’s work session.
wants to hold onto its “home-
town roots.”
“Modern is fine,” she said.
“But it’s gotten out of control.”
Brooks said, before Clark,
the problems had been mount-
ing for quite a while.
Derek Daly, hospital CEO
and an employee of Health-
TechS3, said it is normal for
a hospital district to evaluate
a contract, especially after 30
years.
“We’re not the only small
town. We’re not the only small
hospital and a small county
that goes through this pro-
cess,” Daly said. “This is very
normal.”
According to the district’s
annual expense trend, from
July 2019 to June 2020 the
district paid HealthTechS3
$961,717.
Daly said the hospital
gets services that range from
financial audits to access to a
group purchasing organization
where the hospital can lever-
age collective buying power
to keep costs down for sup-
plies and materials.
Board chairperson Amy
Kreger said the purpose of the
work session was to gather
facts and to listen to the peo-
ple whom they represent.
Board member Karla Aver-
ett said, whichever way the
board decides to go, they need
to be careful and not make a
“rash” decision to “cripple”
the system.
The board spent most of
the meeting inventorying the
hospital’s services from the
management company and
considering whether or not
they could get them a la carte
and have more control in the
operations of the hospital.
Board member Dotty Par-
sons said, when she read
through the contract, it looked
as if the management com-
pany had more control than
the board.
“I don’t even know why
we have a board of directors,”
Parsons said.
She said, when they have
gone to Daly for “suggestions
or directions,” the manage-
ment company has been the
one “calling the shots.”
Averett said Daly is
“highly capable” of making
decisions on his own without
HealthTech.
Daly said he ultimately has
the ability to make decisions.
“They provide thoughts,
they provide guidance and
they provide counsel,” he said.
However, Daly said his “rela-
tionship and his duty” is at the
hospital.
Daly said the hospitals
that genuinely are indepen-
dent are still in many circum-
stances contracting for other
services. He said one example
is Harney County Hospital,
which is very similar to John
Day and closely connected
to St. Charles Health System
because of its electronic medi-
cal records program.
He said a lot of information
technology support comes
from St. Charles.
Averett suggested that a
“plan of action” would be to
meet with similar hospital dis-
tricts and other health care
management services and then
come back for another session.
Kreger said she knows
the “long-seated” chair of
the Harney County Hospital
Board and that they could set
up a meeting.
“Who knows,” Averett
said. “Maybe this is the first
step at saving a couple of hun-
dred thousand dollars a year.”
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