The Dayton administration has launched a campaign to save and rebuild Minnesota's only state-operated psychiatric hospital for children and teens, arguing that private-sector facilities don't furnish the sustained, intensive care that some young patients require.
The Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health Services facility in Willmar, which has struggled to stay afloat amid budget cuts and a shortage of professional staff, would be resurrected in an $8 million plan in Gov. Mark Dayton's bonding proposal.
The 16-bed hospital treats children with some of the most complex and highly acute psychiatric problems in the state, but it has been operating at less than half of capacity for the past two years.
Last spring, a proposal to close the facility and shift its services to private hospitals drew heavy criticism from families and medical professionals, who argued that such a move would leave a hole in the state's safety net.
Many of its young patients require an intensive level of longer-term care that is not available elsewhere, the families said.
"That hospital absolutely needs to stay open," said Mike Praus of Waconia, who credits the state child and adolescent behavioral health facility with stabilizing his 17-year-old daughter after a long bout with anxiety and aggression. "If there was one heart hospital in the state, you wouldn't close it down. It's that essential."
But costs and the facility's deterioration long have been a concern. In recent years, the hospital has had trouble admitting highly aggressive patients because of infrastructure limitations, including poor security partitions. As talk of a shutdown spread, nurses and psychiatric staff began to leave for more stable jobs, prompting the child behavioral health hospital to curb its patient population.
The wait to be admitted had stretched to as long as six months, which was not tenable for children suffering with an acute psychiatric crisis.
