FLINT, Mich. — Flint is investing $500,000 from opioid settlement funds to expand psychiatric and behavioral health services.
The city is partnering with Insight Health Systems to increase inpatient bed capacity from 19 to 70 beds.
“Today we are choosing treatment over neglect, recovery over despair, and hope over hopelessness,” said Sheldon Neeley, mayor of the city of Flint.
Dr. Jawad Shah, founder and CEO of Insight Health Systems, said the expansion will allow the facility to treat more patients.
“We can bring in patients quicker, treat more people. To me, every month, every year is another life that we haven’t been able to touch that we could have had we had the resources,” Shah said.
Insight Health Systems treats inpatient addiction and psychiatric disorders, as well as outpatient issues including depression and autism. Shah said the facility is currently turning away patients who need long-term help because of limited bed capacity.
“We have too many outpatients. They’re depending on us when they’re really in trouble, life-threatening illnesses,” Shah said. “We have nowhere to put them. So for every bed, we can increase our capacity at an outpatient level.”
Neeley said mental illness affects families and the community.
“High levels of crime, you know, that people are not in a great mental state. Depression, you know, it impacts their day-to-day behavior and their work life and community,” Neeley said.
Shah said Insight still needs to raise $7 million to $10 million through internal funding, grants or private donors. The facility will also need to increase staffing to support the expansion.
The goal is to have the new beds available in one to two years.
“We’re already getting filled up in our current facility and really our problem is operational in that the staff, the nurses, the physicians, there’s not enough. And so, but we do know that there’s a much bigger need now and a bigger gap,” Shah said.
This is the second grant Insight Health Systems has received from the city of Flint.
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