Vermont’s largest hospital system is expanding the number of psychiatrists on staff and doubling the number of child psychiatrists its academic medical center trains in a given year.
The University of Vermont Health Network, which controls three hospitals in Vermont and three in upstate New York, is actively recruiting until it has eight psychiatrists at the Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in Plattsburgh, New York.
The flagship UVM Medical Center will create a new part of its Department of Psychiatry called the Adirondack Division so the Plattsburgh hospital’s psychiatrists will be fully linked to the academic medical center.
Additionally, the UVM Medical Center plans to double the number of child psychiatrists it trains in a given year — from four to eight. That’s in addition to the hospital’s existing plan to train more psychiatrists for adults in coordination with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Dr. Robert Pierattini, the chair of the UVM Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry, said the expansions could help address an ongoing shortage of psychiatrists both nationally and in Vermont.
Just one year ago, the Plattsburgh hospital had to temporarily stop accepting children under age 12 to its inpatient psychiatric unit because of a staffing shortage. Also, Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, New Hampshire, closed its psychiatric unit that served both adults and children.
The Department of Mental Health said at the time that the state relies on beds in bordering states as “a relief valve for voluntary psychiatric inpatient beds impacted by the demands for higher acuity patient care in Vermont’s inpatient psychiatric units.”
As of Thursday, the Plattsburgh hospital was still not at full capacity. The hospital operated only 14 of its 16 beds for adults and eight of its 12 beds for children and adolescents. Pierattini said staffing expansion in the fall would open up those remaining beds.
Pierattini said there are currently the equivalent of four full-time psychiatrists working there, and the hospital needs at least eight to run at full capacity. The plan is to have the full eight working by this fall, and to recruit more if necessary, he said.
Since the closure of the Vermont State Hospital in 2011, psychiatric patients have continued to wait for days in emergency rooms for space to open up in psychiatric beds.
On Friday, four psychiatric patients were waiting in the UVM Medical Center’s emergency department for placement. None were waiting in the emergency department in Plattsburgh.
On Thursday, Pierattini said the state needs more beds for involuntary patients, beds for patients with an acute designation called Level 1, and beds for patients who have more mid-level needs. He was not sure how much of an impact the expansion in upstate New York would have.
“This is not going to be available, at least not immediately, for involuntary patients,” he said. “We don’t know until they’re open and we’re operating how much that increase is going to be serving New York and the Plattsburgh area directly and how much might be available for Vermonters.”
On the child psychiatry side, he said the hospital would expand a two-year fellowship program from training four doctors at a time to training eight at a time. He said those people would help meet a nationwide and regional shortage of child psychiatrists.
Across the country, there is only one child psychiatrist for every 1,807 children who need services, according to The Washington Post.
