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EDITORIAL
Our view: Strickland owes Dayton a hearing, more respect on Twin Valley closing
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Gov. Ted Strickland has formalized what was becoming obvious:
He does not care what this community thinks about his decision to close Twin Valley Behavioral Healthcare — the only public psychiatric facility serving the region.
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Local input wasn't sought prior to the decision being announced Jan. 31. Little or none has been sought since.
And now the decision is final and won't be reconsidered, the governor's spokesman, Keith Dailey, said Monday.
Local leaders aren't taking no for an answer. A group will be traveling to Columbus today to give testimony before the House Finance Committee.
"It has been a poor process, poorly communicated and poorly executed," says Bryan Bucklew of the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association.
Neither the governor nor the Ohio Department of Mental Heath spoke to area hospitals, patients, families or Wright State Medical School before or since the announcement, he said.
Montgomery County Sheriff Dave Vore hasn't been consulted either. Last year he executed probate court orders requiring his office to transport about 200 mentally disturbed men and women for psychiatric treatment.
He also has had responsibility for a daily average of three to five prisoners who have been accused of criminal wrongdoing and who require major medical intervention because of mental illness.
"We essentially are being told by the state: 'Just muddle through,' " Sheriff Vore said. "That is no way to deal with the mentally ill."
Joe Szoke, director of the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board of Montgomery County, said he first received notice of the closing about 10 minutes before Gov. Strickland announced it. He since was called to a meeting with the Department of Mental Health, but says he was told it's "a done deal."
The governor's office is focused on the $13 million annually that supposedly will be saved by closing the facility. But the governor also needs to talk about the risk and cost his decision creates.
What, for example, is the increased danger that this community may experience a terrible incident involving a mentally ill person?
Here's the scenario that came forward at Friday's public meeting on the proposed closing:
Patients posing a danger to themselves or others will have to be ferried to hospitals in Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo — taking cops off the street to become long-distance escorts. Area hospitals, caseworkers, police, patients' families and friends are likely to quickly become stressed and swamped.
And people could fall through the cracks, resulting in a serious incident where someone gets hurt.
An assembly of a 100 or more people weighed this and other possibilities at the local meeting.
A representative from the Ohio Department of Mental Health was supposed to be on hand, but canceled on account of icy roads. (Others from Columbus somehow found a way to make the trip.)
Good Samaritan and Miami Valley hospitals' medical directors described how closing the facility would render this community vulnerable in a variety of profound ways.
Dr. Jerald Kay, chairman of Wright State Medical School's Department of Psychiatry, accompanied by a dozen or so of his students and residents, explained that closing Twin Valley amounts to "eating our seed corn" — and permanently degrading the quality of psychiatric care in this community by removing its main training facility.
The governor says the Department of Mental Health has sound reasons for the closing. More than three weeks after the decision was made, though, those reasons are not public. And nothing justifies Gov. Strickland's and his people's failure to consult with Dayton about such a big decision. The community still deserves to be heard.
