Systems unite to propose new mental health hospital
Three nonprofit health systems in the Milwaukee area plan to present a joint proposal next week to replace the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division’s acute-care psychiatric hospital in Wauwatosa.
The three health systems are Ascension Wisconsin, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, and Rogers Behavioral Health.
“As local, not-for-profit organizations, each of our three providers offers a unique set of expertise, resources and a long-term commitment to the community,” the health systems said in a joint statement.
The Behavioral Health Division has been working to find an organization or company that would contract with the county to provide care for patients now treated at the Mental Health Complex in Wauwatosa.
Its options up to now have been limited to two out-ofstate, for-profit companies that had shown interest: Universal Health Services Inc. and Correct Care Solutions.
Universal, based in King of Prussia, Pa., is being investigated by the federal government for fraud at 20 of its behavioral health hospitals in nine states, according to the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It also is being investigated by at least three states.
Correct Care, based in Nashville, Tenn., focuses on providing medical and behavioral health care in prisons and jails and runs only one behavioral health hospital.
The Behavioral Health Division and advocates for the mentally ill had hoped that a local health system would step forward. But the proposal from Ascension Wisconsin, Chil-
dren’s Hospital and Rogers Behavioral Health comes very late in the process.
The Behavioral Health Division hired the law firm of Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren to research Universal Health Services and Correct Care Solutions, and the board that oversees the division set up a task force to recommend one of the two for-profit applicants.
The task force, which visited sites of each of the candidates earlier this year, was to make its recommendation on Thursday of next week.
The Behavioral Health Division then planned to negotiate a contract with the selected company, and its board hoped to approve the final agreement in August.
How the last-minute proposal from the local systems will affect the process is unknown.
“At this point, we are not aware of the details that will be in the coalition’s proposal, but we look forward to hearing from
them next week,” said Kimberly Kane, a spokeswoman for the Behavioral Health Division.
In a joint statement, Ascension Wisconsin, Children’s Hospital and Rogers Behavioral Health confirmed they would “propose a solution that would meet the acute care behavioral health needs of adults, adolescents and children currently served by the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division.”
The three health systems said it would be premature to provide details on their proposal before their initial conversations with the division. But they did say that Ascension’s Wheaton Franciscan-St. Joseph Campus is under consideration to house the program.
The St. Joseph hospital has room for a psychiatric unit. The additional revenue also could help lessen that hospital’s losses.
About 60 patients are hospitalized at the Mental Health Complex on a typical day, and its emergency department provides care to about 28 patients a day on average, or about 10,000 a year.
Its patients overall tend to be sicker, with higher percentages of them having depressive, bipolar and psychotic disorders, than the behavioral health patients admitted to other hospitals — with the exception of Aurora Psychiatric Hospital — in Milwaukee County.
Patients with severe behavioral health conditions — about 2,000 a year, or an average of slightly more than five a day — are transferred to the Behavioral Health Division’s hospital.
But the hospital is in an outdated and aging structure. Also, the Behavioral Health Division’s focus now is increasingly on providing services in the community, with the goal of preventing people from being hospitalized.
At the same time, people with severe behavioral health conditions — such as psychotic disorders, complex bipolar disorders, treatment-resistant depression, severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and substance use disorders — are more likely to develop medical problems, such as diabetes or heart disease, according to a recent brief by the National Academy of Medicine.