Baystate Health plan for new psychiatric hospital raises questions, hopes in community
Baystate Health’s plan to build a behavioral health hospital has left folks who work in mental health in the Pioneer Valley with a lot of questions, as well as a sense of reassurance. The new hospital will be for children and adolescents as well as adults and will serve patients with mental health and substance abuse needs, Baystate announced Monday. It will be a partnership with for-profit provider US HealthVest of New York. “It’s good to see that they are reviewing their utilization of psychiatric beds,” said Nick Fleisher, vice president of community-based services for Clinical & Support Options in Hampshire and Franklin counties. “As for the impact. It’s impossible to tell until we know more. There is a lot of challenges in getting people into psychiatric beds and getting them in quickly.”