Samaritan scales back mental health services
TROY — Samaritan Hospital will stop accepting new patients at its outpatient mental health clinic, scaling back behavioral health services at the hospital for the second time this year.
St. Peter’s Health Partners officials cited a recent exodus of staff for the decision to turn away new admissions at the Troy facility, starting Dec. 25.
Hospital staff are working with local and state agencies to help community members find alternative mental health service providers, according to St. Peter’s spokesman Robert Webster. Samaritan Hospital is part of the St. Peter’s network.
“Samaritan Hospital — like all health care providers nationwide — continues to suffer significant staffing challenges,” Webster said in a statement. “Although a difficult decision, it is a necessary course of action to ensure patients are receiving care in the most timely manner possible.”
Hospital officials said the change is temporary, but did not specify an end date for the policy. Samaritan Hospital’s emergency department will continue to accept patients who are in crisis and those in need of addiction services, according to Webster.
The hospital previously reduced the clinic’s service area in June, telling patients who did not reside in Troy to find other providers. At that time, hospital officials said the reduction in services was not permanent.
The hospital is having difficulty serving its 700 existing patients and has a waitlist of over 200 patients, according to Webster.
The recent resignation of two providers has tipped Samaritan’s already strained services into a critical position. The clinic, which once had 20 therapists, will be down to 4.5 in January, according to Rensselaer County
Mental Health Commissioner Kathy Coons.
The hospital’s recruitment efforts have been hampered by competition with telemedicine, which covers a client base with less rigorous needs, and also offers remote opportunities. “There really aren’t a lot of alternatives, though there are some new telehealth practices that have opened up like Aptihealth and Valera health — and in fact, that’s where some staff have left to go,” Coons said.
Coons said the county health clinic has picked up some patients for whom virtual care is inappropriate, but the county clinic is also close to capacity.
“This isn’t unique to Samaritan,” Coons said. “Samaritan happens to be kind of at the critical juncture here in Rensselaer County but it is across the state at every level of care.”
Rensselaer County Executive
Steve Mclaughlin criticized the timing of the decision, which he said would leave people without access to treatment during the holidays.
“This suspension is coming with little or no advance notice to the public during the holidays, which are often a time when people need help or support,” Mclaughlin said. “The holidays are not a time when there should be new obstacles or reduced options during a time of high demand.”
Mclaughlin asked St. Peter’s to consider delaying the decision while calling on state leaders to provide more resources to address service and staffing shortfalls in behavioral health services.
St. Peter’s is currently facing scrutiny over its plan to close the Burdett Birth Center at Samaritan Hospital, which is the only maternity ward in the county. The closure of the birth center was initially slated for December 2023, but hospital leaders delayed the timeline six months in response to community objections.