Inpatient detox services return

A “short-term” solution has been reached to remedy the loss of inpatient behavioral health treatment in Ulster County due to the COVID-19 pandemic, County Executive Pat Ryan said Tuesday.

Ryan said during a Facebook Live event that inpatient substance-abuse disorder services now are being provided at HealthAlliance Hospital’s Broadway Campus in Kingston.

Sixty beds for mental health and detox patients at HealthAlliance’s Mary’s Avenue Campus, also in Kingston, were eliminated early in the pandemic — to make room for a possible surge in COVID patients — and those services were shifted to MidHudson Regional Hospital in Poughkeepsie. The HealthAlliance hospitals and MidHudson Regional are all operated by the Westchester Medical Center Health Network.

Ryan said earlier this month that inpatient behavioral health and drug treatment services were unlikely to return to Kingston before late this year. But due to a waiver granted by the state Office of Addiction Services and Supports, HealthAlliance now is able to utilize “normal” medical surge beds for detox treatment services, the executive said Tuesday.

He did not say how many beds at the Broadway Campus will be available for detox services or when a full range of mental health inpatient services might return.

“This is a short-term solution as HealthAlliance works to address the long term needs for behavioral health beds in Ulster County,” Ryan said in a press release issued after the online event.

On Facebook, Ryan said the Broadway Campus will offer “a full complement of full-service substance-abuse services” and also give patients with substance-abuse disorders opportunities to connect with “the outpatient services necessary to their battle” with addiction.

Ryan said he wrote to HealthAlliance to urge the reactivation of “vital behavioral health beds in Ulster County, including both inpatient mental health and substance-[ab]use disorder beds.”

“We know that the pressures created by COVID-19 have led to an increase in opioid overdoses and fatalities in Ulster County,” Ryan said. “In light of this, we must double down on our efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. I am confident that these initiatives … will help to save lives.”

Additionally, in response to an increase in opioid-related fatalities during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ryan said the Ulster County Department of Health, the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office and the city of Kingston will expand their diversion program and launch a new High Risk Mitigation Team that will work with high-risk individuals and first responders to identify people in need of care.

The team will then follow patients’ treatment so they don’t slip through the cracks in the existing system, Ryan said.

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In other coronavirus-related news:

• At his daily press briefing Tuesday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that, beginning Friday, group homes might allow visitation. Like hospitals and nursing homes, visits to group homes were halted in mid-March in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

In a prepared statement, Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro called the governor’s decision “long overdue but certainly welcome nonetheless.”

“Thanks to the persistence of parents, after months of isolation, they can finally be reunited with their children,” Molinaro wrote. “... Thank you, Governor, for doing the right thing.”

Cuomo on Tuesday also announced the immediate restart of hospital visitation, “at the discretion” of individual facilities.

The governor said nursing home visits cannot resume yet because of the high risk to residents.

• U.S. Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-Rhinebeck, a member of the House Small Business Committee, announced his support as an original co-sponsor of the Small Business PPE (personal protective equipment) Tax Credit Act.

The bipartisan legislation would provide a tax credit of up to $25,000 for the purchase of personal protective equipment by small businesses, 501(c)(3) nonprofits, veterans’ organizations, independent contractors, farmers, the selfemployed and others

By the numbers

Ulster County on Tuesday said it had had 1,782 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 1,368 recoveries and 83 deaths since the outbreak began. Ulster reported 331 active cases. The Tuesday information reflected the addition of just one confirmed case on Monday, a day after the county had no new cases for the first time since the pandemic began.

Dutchess County reported 4,068 confirmed cases, 447 active cases, 3,474 recovered cases and 147 deaths.

Columbia county reported 422 cases, 39 active cases and 37 deaths.

Greene County reported 317 cases, 9 active cases and 18 deaths.

For local stories about the coronavirus, go to bit. ly/DFCOVID19. For live updates, visit bit.ly/ DFcovid19live.