The transformation of Vermont’s mental health system and the continuing fallout of the closure of the Vermont State Hospital by Tropical Storm Irene brought news on several fronts Tuesday in a busy day inside and outside the Vermont Statehouse.
Anne Noonan, commissioner at the Department of Labor, Vermont State Treasurer Beth Pearce and Human Resources Commissioner Kate Duffy detailed for lawmakers an array of efforts, including plans for a retirement incentive, to ease the situation for former state hospital employees facing layoffs and an uncertain future.
Meanwhile, three lawmakers each from the House and Senate began working out differences on a complex bill that dramatically shifts mental health treatment in the state to a more community based model while downsizing and partially privatizing the number of acute care hospital beds.
In Morrisville, Lamoille Community Connections has given a preliminary green light to a temporary plan by the state to house and treat eight acute care patients in space at their headquarters, which is the regional mental health agency. The decision offers hope for an interim solution to a severe crisis in acute care in the state.
And based on testimony by Mental Health Commissioner Patrick Flood Tuesday afternoon, it appears likely the state will settle on a 10-room building in Windsor at the Southeast State Correctional Facility as a secure site for five to 10 “forensic” patients who have been ordered held by the courts. The state has been evaluating numerous locales for patients sent into the system by the courts.
Those developments highlight the state’s continuing struggle to deal with the flooding closure of the state hospital in Waterbury, whose 54 intensive care beds were a critical piece of mental health treatment despite an antiquated building and loss of federal funding nearly a decade ago.
The discussions about the layoffs of state hospital workers and the news that the Lamoille facility may go along with a controversial plan to house eight patients at its headquarters in the former Genesis nursing home illustrates the yin and yang of intertwined issues that has beset the state since Irene hit Aug. 28.
Anne Noonan, commissioner of the Department of Labor, told lawmakers that the state has several million dollars in different funding pools that can be used to assist former state hospital workers in job searches, retraining and education or to boost their certification for jobs in the new mental health system so they are “more marketable and employable.”
Noonan assured lawmakers that state workers who take another job outside state government will remain eligible to get a first crack at state jobs as the new mental health treatment system is built if they keep the state informed of their interest.
Lawmakers asked Pearce, the state treasurer and Duffy to provide fiscal information that will enable lawmakers to add a voluntary retirement incentive in the mental health bill. With the 960 state employees cutback in 2009, the incentive was available to employees 55 or older with 20 years in service, according to Pearce.
According to figures given to the committee, 20 VSH employees have over 25 years of service, and many have five or less.
Sen. Peg Flory, R-Rutland, said she was concerned that when the state finally opens its new mental health hospital in Berlin, many highly qualified state workers will have left the field and staffing will be an issue.
“I think we’ll do what we have to do to make sure that facility is properly staffed,” said Duffy.
Lamoille Community Connections Board President Ed French Jr. said the board unanimously agreed Monday night to consider the state’s proposal, subject to reaching an agreement that addresses a number of concerns raised by the community. The board will meet again next Wednesday in a public hearing to discuss the plans, he said.
The state has been desperately searching for more beds for Level I intensive care and run into numerous dead ends before the Morrisville facility came on the horizon. Last month a standing-room only crowd debated the merits of the proposal with heated arguments on both sides. Eventually as many as 15 patients could be treated at the site under the state’s plan to lease two wings of the building.
Vermonters needing intensive mental health care are currently crowding wards at major hospitals around the state, creating a cascading shortage of beds for many levels of treatment and wreaking havoc in facilities not set up to deal with acute care patients.
If a portion of the Lamoille facility eventually is renovated and opened, it will provide some good news for former state hospital employees by providing them job opportunities – as many as 70 jobs may be created at the facility for 24-hour care.
Appearing before the Senate Government Operations Committee in the afternoon, Duffy, the state’s human resources commissioner, said of the roughly 240 state hospital employees working when Irene hit, 195 were on the payroll in December of last year, working at a number of replacement facilities. Now, 74 of those have formally been notified they face a RIF (reduction in force) and will lose their jobs at the end of March, she said.
That number is slightly less than originally announced a couple of weeks ago. If their qualifications fit other state jobs they may be able to “bump” other employees with less seniority, she said. She said the majority of those former VSH employees are at Brattleboro Retreat, the state correctional facility at Springfield and a few other locations.
She said a potentially bigger layoff is possible in April with former VSH employees who are working at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington.
She called the situation for the former state hospital workers “very fluid.”
“They still have anxiety and concern about what’s going to happen,” she said, noting it will be months before the state can “retrofit” the Morrisville facility and at least several years before a replacement state hospital being proposed in Berlin near Central Vermont Medical Center is built.
House and Senate conferees began work Tuesday to reach agreement on the mental health transformation bill passed by both chambers. The size of the Berlin facility is a main bone of contention, with the House proposing 25 beds and the Senate 16, which is the number favored by Gov. Peter Shumlin’s administration.
Duffy said officials have been “very clear” in discussions with mental health workers about uncertainty with the jobs in the new hospital facility. But she said one thing is clear: “There’s certainly not going to be the same level of staffing that we have right now,” she said.
However, Duffy said private hospitals that are targeted to become part of the new mental health system “have expressed clearly to us” they are interested in the former VSH employees. But she said a number of factors such as the location of the jobs and pay and the individual’s training will impact how many sign on.
