, based at the Prairie Justice Center in Worthington, except for one thing: a provider. ElevaCare originally planned to offering its services, but due to recent funding setbacks, the clinic withdrew from the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not kind of that seed funding to get it started in regards to the employees and the overall cost of it,\u201d Luke Comeau, ElevaCare\u2019s executive director, said last week. \u201cUnfortunately, when you talk about now staffing it, we need about $1.2 million in startup funding to get that rolling. I would say that the project isn\u2019t necessarily dead in the waters, it\u2019s that we \u2014 as in the counties and everybody involved \u2014 we\u2019ve got to figure out how to get this money to help launch this thing. And so for us as an organization, we backed away as we can\u2019t take on that loss right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The center will need upward of 15 to 20 employees, and it will take an estimated six months of more to onboard everyone.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve got to come together and get this launched because it affects everybody.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Luke Comeau<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the time you start hiring people to the opening date, who\u2019s paying those people\u2019s salaries?\u201d Comeau asked. \u201cThat\u2019s why you have the start-up funding, right? And there\u2019s usually grants and things for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was funding in place that was issued several years ago, but according to Comeau, it didn\u2019t really address the full employee costs. It included consultant funding and funding for other things, but not to the degree of paying employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key word here is start-up,\u201d Comeau said. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to hire these people and let\u2019s say we can\u2019t open, who\u2019s going to be paying for that? And we don\u2019t want to put employees through \u2018Hey, we may or may not get a paycheck\u2019 type of thing and so that would be the reason why we, as ElevaCare, said we can\u2019t take that liability on right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second issue is the timing, as President Donald Trump recently enacted an HR1 federal mandate that holds Minnesota responsible for cleaning up the administration of dollars associated with Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe federal government \u2026 said \u2018You have to correct your Medicaid funding or we\u2019re stopping all funding,\u2019\u201d Comeau explained. \u201cSo this is a totally separate issue in \u2026 regard to the center. That was enacted four or five months ago and some Medicaid payments across the state have basically been withheld and Minnesota … has been put on like a performance plan … from the federal government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason that\u2019s important is that, in essence, Medicaid pays for this Behavioral Stabilization Center, so it\u2019s also really bad timing to even consider opening a new thing when (Department of Homeland Security) would not be funding it right now because they\u2019re not opening up new programs, and truly Medicaid payments across the state have come to a halt while they work out some of the issues,\u201d Comeau continued. \u201cWe\u2019re confident that Medicaid will get kicked back in again, but it\u2019s also the timing of all of this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The federal mandate makes it more difficult for Nobles County to find a provider, County Administrator Bruce Heitkamp said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur options are open at this point,\u201d he said. \u201cThe county has worked very hard and put a lot of money into renovating it \u2026 When people have nowhere to go when they have a psychotic episode, they often end up in an emergency room and\/or jail. And in many instances and jails all throughout, there\u2019s a lot of mental health patients that maybe have committed crimes, but there\u2019s limited means of seeking treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The short-term stabilization crisis center model is intended to serve 11 counties in the primary placement area, with another four or five counties considered in the secondary placement area. Once the center is operational, it will assist those neighboring county partners. However, with only eight beds available, Heitkamp said they expect quite a bit of demand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect it to be full. It\u2019s not going to be a long-term fix; the people will go there for a 3- to 10-day stay,\u201d Heitkamp said. \u201cWhen they have the episode and it\u2019s diagnosed that they need the short-term stabilization center, they\u2019ll go to that, if there\u2019s a bed for them. And in that 10-day process, maybe they will be fine, maybe they\u2019ll be able to get back on their feet \u2026 or they\u2019re going to know where they\u2019re going to have to go next for further treatment.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re out trying to find that provider to basically get up and running.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Nobles County Administrator Bruce Heitkamp<\/p>\n
\u201cElevaCare is a great partner for options down the road and I think there\u2019s a lot of economies if ElevaCare were the provider, but as it sits now \u2026 that\u2019s not an option that they\u2019ve given us,\u201d Heitkamp continued. \u201cWe\u2019re out trying to find that provider to basically get up and running. And everything (at the center) is basically ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once a provider is found, they will need time for set up and other required tasks before the center can officially open.<\/p>\n
Heitkamp said he and Community Services Director Stacie Golombiecki plan to meet with the Community Services Advisory Committee this week to discuss finding a provider.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are working,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Comeau also said on behalf of ElevaCare\u2019s board of directors, they want to see the center open.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been so much work over truly eight or nine years. We\u2019ve just had a season within our government and with the cost of things that it\u2019s very, very challenging,” he said. “And so, I definitely want to note that our goal is to help find the funding to get it open.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe it should be open and it should be a collaborative approach between lots of individuals, whether it\u2019s counties or hospitals or grant funding. We\u2019ve got to come together and get this launched because it affects everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WORTHINGTON \u2014 Everything is basically ready at Nobles County\u2019s Regional Adult Mental Health Crisis Stabilization Center , based…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":870330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[36],"tags":[354185,354186,210,354187,517,354190,3663,354188,354189,67,132,68,167489],"class_list":["post-870329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-behavioral-stabilization-center","tag-bruce-heitkamp","tag-health","tag-luke-comeau","tag-mental-health","tag-mental-health-crisis-center","tag-minnesota","tag-nobles-county","tag-prairie-justice-center","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-worthington"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116757804776676785","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}