WORTHINGTON — Everything is basically ready at
Nobles County’s Regional Adult Mental Health Crisis Stabilization Center
, based at the Prairie Justice Center in Worthington, except for one thing: a provider. ElevaCare originally planned to offering its services, but due to recent funding setbacks, the clinic withdrew from the project.
“There’s not kind of that seed funding to get it started in regards to the employees and the overall cost of it,” Luke Comeau, ElevaCare’s executive director, said last week. “Unfortunately, when you talk about now staffing it, we need about $1.2 million in startup funding to get that rolling. I would say that the project isn’t necessarily dead in the waters, it’s that we — as in the counties and everybody involved — we’ve got to figure out how to get this money to help launch this thing. And so for us as an organization, we backed away as we can’t take on that loss right now.”
The center will need upward of 15 to 20 employees, and it will take an estimated six months of more to onboard everyone.
We’ve got to come together and get this launched because it affects everybody.
Luke Comeau
“From the time you start hiring people to the opening date, who’s paying those people’s salaries?” Comeau asked. “That’s why you have the start-up funding, right? And there’s usually grants and things for that.”
There was funding in place that was issued several years ago, but according to Comeau, it didn’t really address the full employee costs. It included consultant funding and funding for other things, but not to the degree of paying employees.
“The key word here is start-up,” Comeau said. “If we’re going to hire these people and let’s say we can’t open, who’s going to be paying for that? And we don’t want to put employees through ‘Hey, we may or may not get a paycheck’ type of thing and so that would be the reason why we, as ElevaCare, said we can’t take that liability on right now.”
The second issue is the timing, as President Donald Trump recently enacted an HR1 federal mandate that holds Minnesota responsible for cleaning up the administration of dollars associated with Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
“The federal government … said ‘You have to correct your Medicaid funding or we’re stopping all funding,’” Comeau explained. “So this is a totally separate issue in … regard to the center. That was enacted four or five months ago and some Medicaid payments across the state have basically been withheld and Minnesota … has been put on like a performance plan … from the federal government.
“The reason that’s important is that, in essence, Medicaid pays for this Behavioral Stabilization Center, so it’s also really bad timing to even consider opening a new thing when (Department of Homeland Security) would not be funding it right now because they’re not opening up new programs, and truly Medicaid payments across the state have come to a halt while they work out some of the issues,” Comeau continued. “We’re confident that Medicaid will get kicked back in again, but it’s also the timing of all of this.”
The federal mandate makes it more difficult for Nobles County to find a provider, County Administrator Bruce Heitkamp said.
“Our options are open at this point,” he said. “The county has worked very hard and put a lot of money into renovating it … When people have nowhere to go when they have a psychotic episode, they often end up in an emergency room and/or jail. And in many instances and jails all throughout, there’s a lot of mental health patients that maybe have committed crimes, but there’s limited means of seeking treatment.”
The short-term stabilization crisis center model is intended to serve 11 counties in the primary placement area, with another four or five counties considered in the secondary placement area. Once the center is operational, it will assist those neighboring county partners. However, with only eight beds available, Heitkamp said they expect quite a bit of demand.
“We expect it to be full. It’s not going to be a long-term fix; the people will go there for a 3- to 10-day stay,” Heitkamp said. “When they have the episode and it’s diagnosed that they need the short-term stabilization center, they’ll go to that, if there’s a bed for them. And in that 10-day process, maybe they will be fine, maybe they’ll be able to get back on their feet … or they’re going to know where they’re going to have to go next for further treatment.
We’re out trying to find that provider to basically get up and running.
Nobles County Administrator Bruce Heitkamp
“ElevaCare is a great partner for options down the road and I think there’s a lot of economies if ElevaCare were the provider, but as it sits now … that’s not an option that they’ve given us,” Heitkamp continued. “We’re out trying to find that provider to basically get up and running. And everything (at the center) is basically ready.”
Once a provider is found, they will need time for set up and other required tasks before the center can officially open.
Heitkamp said he and Community Services Director Stacie Golombiecki plan to meet with the Community Services Advisory Committee this week to discuss finding a provider.
“We are working,” he said.
Comeau also said on behalf of ElevaCare’s board of directors, they want to see the center open.
“There’s been so much work over truly eight or nine years. We’ve just had a season within our government and with the cost of things that it’s very, very challenging,” he said. “And so, I definitely want to note that our goal is to help find the funding to get it open.
“We believe it should be open and it should be a collaborative approach between lots of individuals, whether it’s counties or hospitals or grant funding. We’ve got to come together and get this launched because it affects everybody.”