KEEP HUTCHINGS OPEN — PEF Vice President Ken Brynien urges lawmakers holding a public hearing to reject Gov. Pataki's plan to close the Hutchings PC. He's joined by Region 4 Coordinator Dave Stallone and Council Leader Maureen Hogle. — Photo by Sherry Halbrook
Proposed move would hurt patients, staff
PEF leaders testify against closing Hutchings PC
By SHERRY HALBROOK
At a February public hearing in Syracuse, state legislators on the Assembly Standing Committee on Mental Health and Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities grilled a deputy commissioner from the state Office of Mental Health who tried to defend a state budget proposal to close the Richard H. Hutchings Psychiatric Center in Syracuse.
The lawmakers seemed to share the concerns raised by PEF speakers and others testifying against the proposal.
PEF also opposes the governor’s budget proposal to close Middletown Psychiatric Center and its forensic unit and move the operations of four children’s facilities onto campuses with centers for adults.
PEF Vice President Ken Brynien and PEF Division 301 Council Leader Maureen Hogle, a social work assistant 2 at Hutchings, told the lawmakers the proposals fly in the face of the state’s established mental-health goals of moving patients from distant, large institutions back to smaller, local programs in the patients’ home communities.
“Closing this facility would deprive residents of inpatient psychiatric services close to home,” Brynien said.
Brynien said the proposal violates the most basic treatment principle: “to provide local, accessible, and coordinated services.”
Transferring the patients now treated at Hutchings and their services 50 miles away to Mohawk Valley Psychiatric Center in Utica would create an unnecessary hardship on patients, their families and affected staff, he said.
OMH claims that the physical design of the Hutchings campus groups patients in small units that require more staff and higher operating costs.
Hogle joined Brynien in stressing the considerable hardship the move would impose on the families of patients who would have to devote an extra two hours of travel time for visitation, even in good weather.
Many of these families are already under severe emotional and financial strain from dealing with their loved ones’ serious mental illness, the PEF leaders testified.
Patients in the child and adolescent unit at Hutchings would be especially hurt by the increased travel time to and from the Pinefields Unit at Mohawk Valley, according to the PEF leaders.
Brynien, a state psychologist 2, explained that visits from family are a critical factor in successfully treating and discharging young people who are seriously disturbed emotionally. Receiving fewer and briefer visits from family members could cause the youngsters to act out more often and that could delay their progress and discharge, as well as upsetting other patients and staff.
The move also could force many Hutchings staff members to choose between uprooting their families and moving closer to Utica, taking a lower paying job with the state or voluntary agency, or being laid off, Hogle said.