“Inslee’s plan turns the state hospitals into Forensic Centers of Excellence for forensic patients, and moves civil commitment patients into the community by supporting and building additional beds at a combination of smaller state-run and private facilities,” according to the governor’s press release.Īt the press conference, which was held at Navos Mental Health and Wellness Center in Burien, three legislators joined Inslee at the podium: Senators David Frockt and Manka Dhingra and House Speaker Frank Chopp. In the next biennium, $7.5 million will go toward conducting a predesign for the project.
Part of a long-term plan is to construct a new, 500-bed forensic hospital. Other efforts to expand the workforce in the governor’s budget include funding for training advanced behavioral home care aides and conditional scholarships for students who commit to working in state hospitals and state community sites.Īs for Western and Eastern State hospitals, Inslee’s capital budget includes “nearly $56 million” to improve the facilities and $47 million for constructing two new wards and a “modern treatment space” at Western. Jürgen Unützer, Chair in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UW, said at the press conference. “We are ready to work with the governor and with our state and our legislators to roll up our sleeves and really see what we can do as a state to improve care for Washingtonians with mental health and substance abuse problem,” Dr. The partnership with UW would also help to address the shortage of behavior-health workers in the state. The aforementioned projects are in addition to a $2 million predesign for a collaborative teaching hospital at the UW that, according to the above graph from the policy brief, looks to add 150 beds for civil patients. Image: Office of Washington Governor Jay Inslee An additional $30 million+ will be invested in expanding community services to include more options for care (the policy brief gives long-term care facilities as an example) to ease transition after people are discharged and divert more people from inpatient care. His proposal for 2019-21 would start planning for many more beds, predesigning and designing four 16-bed and two 48-bed facilities, as well as predesigning three 150-bed facilities (for a total of over 600 beds, by our math).Īlongside the planned, new facilities, investments in the expansion of current community providers’ capacity alone are “projected to add more than 500 beds statewide” for civilly admitted patients. In the five-year behavioral health plan, Inslee’s preliminary goal was to establish about a dozen 16-bed community hospitals for civil patients across the state (which would amount to, presumably, just under 200 beds total). Eastern and Western state hospitals, in the future, would serve only forensic patients - patients who are involved in the criminal justice system - and high-needs civil patients.Īccording to the policy brief on the new plan, Western state hospital, which lost its federal certification in June, had a waitlist of 71 people waiting to be admitted in November 2018, and 189 people on a waitlist to discharge. “We just need a little bit of will, a little creativity, and a little funding.”Ī major aspect of Inslee’s five-year plan was to move civil patients out of state hospitals and into community settings across the state over time, a transition he originally proposed in his 2017-19 budget proposal.
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“We know how to fix this problem,” Inslee said at the press conference where he announced the plan.
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