The projects, on county land in east Santa Rosa, aim to address shortfalls in local psychiatric care that have persisted for years, especially for low-income patients.
California health officials have awarded Sonoma County $67.7 million in state behavioral health funds for the construction of four, 16-bed psychiatric care facilities and a 40-bed residential drug treatment center, state officials announced Wednesday.
Dr. Jan Cobaleda-Kegler, director of the county’s Behavioral Health Division, said the projects fill large gaps in mental health and substance use services for some of the county’s most vulnerable residents.
The state funds for the five new facilities, to be built on county property in east Santa Rosa, come from Proposition 1, the $6.4 billion mental health bond passed by California voters last year.
Cobaleda-Kegler said the county has about 200 “conservatees” — gravely disabled residents whose care is the responsibility of the county under a court order because of their mental illness. In many cases, these patients also have severe substance use disorders.
The county for years has struggled to offer sufficient bed space for those experiencing psychiatric emergencies. The four 16-bed psychiatric mental health rehabilitation centers are aimed to ensure low-income mental health patients can receive care locally instead of being sent out of the county, Cobaleda-Kegler said.
“We’re excited,“ she said. ”It’s so important — we really want to embrace them and bring them back. In a way they’re forgotten but they’re there.“
The projects would help restore the county’s mental health care landscape to where it once was nearly two decades ago, when there were two public psychiatric hospitals in Santa Rosa. In the mid-2000s, the county had 60 psychiatric beds available for low-income residents.
Sutter Health’s facility on Chanate Road had 30 beds but was reduced to half that capacity just before it closed in 2007. The other, operated by Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital at a satellite facility on Fulton Road, was staffed for 30 beds in 2006 and reduced to 18 beds before it closed in 2008.
The Fulton Road hospital was later acquired and reopened as the for-profit Santa Rosa Behavioral Healthcare Hospital, formerly Aurora Santa Rosa Hospital. The facility, operated by Signature Healthcare Services, was recently the subject of a San Francisco Chronicle investigation into substandard care and staffing issues, factoring in a suicide attempt by an adolescent patient and multiple cases of violence and neglect.
64 psych beds and 40 drug recovery beds
The new Santa Rosa facilities will be located at the current site of the Orenda Center detox facility on Neotomas Avenue, off Farmers Lane. Though the project is still in the planning and predevelopment phase, current plans call for demolition of the existing Orenda Center, said Cobaleda-Kegler.
That site, along with the property’s street-facing parking lot, will host the four 16-bed, mental health rehabilitation centers. A 40-bed adult residential drug treatment facility with drug withdrawal management will be constructed where another parking lot is located.
The 16-bed configuration for the four mental health facilities is driven by a 60-year-old federal rule known as the IMD Exclusion, which prohibits federal dollars from being spent on “Institutes for Mental Disease” unless they’re affiliated with a medical hospital.
The rule was drafted at a time when mental health professionals, advocates for patients and some federal lawmakers were trying to end the notorious era of psychiatric asylums, and replace them with enhanced, community-based outpatient mental health services.
In the ensuing decades, many public psychiatric facilities across the country closed their doors. The IMD Exclusion makes it financially difficult for the county to send mental health patients to private facilities because Medicaid reimbursement is prohibited.
Cobaleda-Kegler said half the county’s mental health patients are regularly sent to out-of-county facilities. During an interview with The Press Democrat in mid-April, Cobaleda-Kegler described the scope of the project.
“It’s a lot of beds that would allow for us to keep these folks here close to their families,” she said. “And close to their community and hopefully improve their prognosis so they can return to a healthy life and come off of conservatorship.”
She said the new residential drug treatment facility and psychiatric facilities, set to be completed by December 2028, would work in concert with the county’s Crisis Stabilization Unit, a psychiatric emergency department located in southwest Santa Rosa where many of the county’s mental health patients are first seen.
Other North Bay projects receiving funds under the same grants announced Wednesday included: $28.2 million for a skilled nursing facility (with a state-approved mental health program) in Napa; $4.4 million to Coppertower Family Medical Center in Cloverdale for an outpatient mental health clinic; $7.7 million to Lake County Behavioral Health Services for a outpatient mental health clinic in Clearlake; $13.5 million to Redwood Quality Management Company for a mental health rehabilitation center in Lakeport; and $9.1 million to Consolidated Tribal Health Project for a community wellness and prevention center in Redwood Valley.
You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.
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