FROM PAGE ONE
Wednesday, april 14, 2021
HerMisTOnHerald.COM • A11
Ben Lonergan/Hermiston Herald
Members of the Hermiston School Board, Superintendent Tricia Mooney, second from right, and future Loma Vista Elementary School Principal Joshua Browning, right, pose for a picture at the
groundbreaking of the new elementary school on Tuesday, April 13, 2021.
Schools:
Continued from page a1
Mooney called it a “huge
step forward” in a proj-
ect that has already taken
years of planning and effort.
“Great
communities
have great schools, and
this is one step to getting
there,” she said.
After the Rocky Heights
groundbreaking,
school
board members and other
dignitaries traveled to the
large, sagebrush-covered
lot at the corner of East
Theater Lane and North-
east 10th Street to break
ground on the new school,
which will be known as
Loma Vista Elementary
School.
Loma Vista will also
serve 600 students, using
the same general layout as
the new Rocky Heights,
and open for the 2022-23
school year.
At the second ground-
breaking, Mooney recog-
nized the work of a long
list of people, including
those who helped get an
$87.2 million bond passed
in 2019 to fund the new
schools. The bond is also
paying for the new softball
complex, a new annex add-
ing classrooms at Hermis-
ton High School, purchase
of additional property
for future schools, and
improvements to the park-
ing and drop-off areas of
several schools.
Wenaha Group has
served as project manag-
ers for the bond, and BBT
Architects did the design
for the schools. Con-
struction of both elemen-
tary schools will be han-
dled by Kirby Nagelhout
Construction.
“I’m looking forward
to having students here
instead of sand and sage-
brush,” Mooney said.
The school district
recently
named
Josh
Browning as principal of
Loma Vista. While the
school is being built, he
will work on staffing the
school and making other
preparations needed before
its opening.
Browning, who is cur-
rently an instructional
coach for the district, said
he is excited to see work
start on the building.
Ben Lonergan/Hermiston Herald
Members of the Hermiston School Board, Hermiston School District and construction representatives pose for a photo at the
groundbreaking of the new Rocky Heights Elementary School in Hermiston on Tuesday, April 13, 2021.
Hermiston School District
Superintendent Tricia
Mooney speaks to attendees
at the groundbreaking for
Loma Vista Elementary
School in Hermiston on
Tuesday, April 13, 2021.
Ben Lonergan/Hermiston Herald
Lifeways:
Continued from page a1
that the building would
likely continue to offer inpa-
tient care, but as a secure
residential treatment facil-
ity, which provides a lower
intensity of care and oper-
ates under different staffing
requirements.
Lifeways already oper-
ates a secure residential
treatment facility in Uma-
tilla, known as McNary
Place, and Johnsen said
there is still additional need
for that type of bed.
According to the news
release, the Lifeways board
of directors made the deci-
sion to cease offering acute
care for individuals in cri-
sis at the Hermiston facil-
ity because “the realities of
COVID-19 and the health
care worker shortage, espe-
cially for rural psychiat-
ric hospital level licensure
and credentialing, creates an
unsustainable situation.”
Johnsen clarified that the
biggest problem was finding
psychiatrists, which under
Oregon rules for acute psy-
chiatric care hospitals must
staff the facility 24 hours a
day. She said Lifeways had
received a waiver from the
state allowing psychiatrists
to provide care via telemed-
icine for 12 months. But
after Aspen Springs passed
six months of operation,
plus months of recruitment
efforts before that, with no
luck finding even a single
full-time psychiatrist will-
ing to come to Hermis-
ton, Johnsen said it became
increasingly clear that Aspen
Springs would not be able to
meet requirements when the
waiver was up.
“And so as we looked
Ben Lonergan/Hermiston Herald
A “now hiring” sign advertises jobs at Aspen Springs Psychiatric Hospital sits along Northwest
11th Street near the recently closed facility in Hermiston on Friday, April 9, 2021.
forward, and knew that
waiver wouldn’t be granted,
and really looked at the care
that we were bound to pro-
vide, it was just untenable,”
she said.
On top of that, Johnsen
said it was also difficult to
find enough nurses willing
to work in both a psychiat-
ric setting and a rural set-
ting, particularly during the
pandemic.
County requesting proposals
for new model of mental
health care
The closure comes on the
cusp of what could be a sig-
nificant change in the way
mental health services are
handled in Umatilla County.
Shafer said the board of
commissioners sent out a
request for proposals, due
April 26, for a single entity
to provide all community
mental health services for
Umatilla County.
Currently, those ser-
vices are divided between
Lifeways, which covers
behavioral health issues not
related to addiction, such as
depression or schizophrenia,
and Umatilla County Alco-
hol & Drug, which covers
substance abuse. But resi-
dents in need of treatment
often fall under both catego-
ries at once, and Shafer said
too often that results in both
sides insisting the other one
should take the case.
“We’ve got fingers point-
ing every which way except
at the problem,” he said.
Johnsen said Lifeways is
submitting a proposal, and
that Lifeways has been suc-
cessful in retaining the con-
tract for the community
mental health program in
the past when it has gone out
for bid. She said Lifeways
already has experience pro-
viding substance use disor-
der services in other places,
including a 30-bed treatment
facility and outpatient ser-
vices in Malheur County, so
they are equipped to provide
addiction treatment in Uma-
tilla County too.
“We have a plan to sub-
mit and I feel we have a fully
competitive application,”
she said.
She said the county is
requiring that proposals
include plans to retain cur-
rent staff of Umatilla County
Alcohol & Drug to provide
treatment under the new
model if they wanted to stay,
so even if Lifeways took
over that side of treatment,
clients would still be seeing
familiar faces.
Lifeways planning next steps
Johnsen said despite the
setback with Aspen Springs
needing to close as an acute
psychiatric hospital, Life-
ways remains fully com-
mitted to serving Umatilla
County residents.
“We want to remain flexi-
ble and nimble and continue
to provide the community
what they need,” she said.
Lifeways
originally
broke ground on the Aspen
Springs building at 1212
Linda Ave. in July 2016,
stating its intent to open
the facility a year later, but
instead began taking patients
in September 2020. In 2019,
Johnsen told the East Ore-
gonian that it had taken lon-
ger than expected to meet all
of the state’s strict require-
ments for the highest level
of psychiatric care.
With the facility’s clo-
sure, she said Lifeways lead-
ership had known it would
be difficult to staff it due
to the challenges of find-
ing licensed mental health
providers willing to work
in rural areas. But they had
expected to be able to find
enough people in time.
“It’s always been a risk
point for us, but we didn’t
think it would get to this
level,” she said.
She said they are open to
reopening the building as a
hospital again in the future
if the psychiatrists become
available to do so, but for
now, the staff and board felt
the best option was to focus
on providing a different level
of care there rather than let-
ting the building sit empty
after the waiver ran out.
“It’s a great facility and
we want to make it avail-
able in whatever capacity
we can,” she said.
Johnsen said Lifeways
has worked with Good
Shepherd Health Care Sys-
tem in its effort to recruit
mental health providers to
the area and will continue to
partner with Good Shepherd
and other local agencies as
needed to provide resources
to the community.
‘It’s definitely a pressing
need out here’
Dennis Burke, who was
CEO of Good Shepherd at
the time of Aspen Springs’
ribbon cutting ceremony in
July 2020, said at the cer-
emony that it was at times
extremely difficult to find
acute psychiatric care beds
for patients who ended up
in Good Shepherd’s emer-
gency room and needed that
level of care. Brian Sims,
current CEO and president
of Good Shepherd, said the
organization was saddened
to learn of the closure of
Aspen Springs for that level
of care.
“It will be a big loss, but
we remain hopeful there will
continue to be alternative
solutions for our communi-
ties,” he said in an email.
From the county’s per-
spective, Shafer said con-
verting Aspen Springs into
a secure residential treat-
ment facility would help fill
a need, but not the biggest
need.
County leaders have often
lobbied the Oregon Legisla-
ture for additional funding
to support capital projects,
such as a planned expansion
of the Umatilla County Jail
that would help staff better
accommodate people com-
ing in while experiencing a
mental health crisis or need-
ing to detox. But Shafer
said they also need to look
at solutions to address the
shortage of licensed men-
tal health professionals, par-
ticularly those willing to
work in a rural area. He said
some sort of financial incen-
tive for providers to work in
small communities could be
a start.
“It’s definitely a press-
ing need out here,” he said.
“Infrastructure is one thing,
but without professionals to
run the building, it’s going to
be an empty building.”