Staff from Butler Hospital will work with Kent's patients now that plans to close the Warwick unit have been scrapped.

01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, October 21, 2004

BY FELICE J. FREYER
Journal Medical Writer

Bowing to public objections, Kent Hospital has abandoned plans to close down its 11-bed psychiatric unit.

But Kent will move forward with expanding its existing unit at Butler Hospital, and will also involve Butler Hospital staff in the care of psychiatric patients at Kent.

In July, the hospital met with strong resistance from staff, patients and others when it announced that it would close its psychiatric unit, and transfer 10 of the beds to Butler Hospital. Both Kent and Butler are owned by Care New England.

Kent's 11-bed unit, the smallest one in the state, was typically half-empty because it is not a locked unit and can accept only voluntary patients. Today, most people who are hospitalized for psychiatric care are committed because they are a danger to themselves and others.

Hospital officials said that converting to a locked unit would be prohibitively expensive. Additionally, the hospital needed more room for its medical-surgical patients, while it was losing money on the psychiatric unit.

Kent, located in Warwick, already operates a 20-bed unit at Butler Hospital, in Providence. Hospital officials thought it would make sense to move all psychiatric services to Butler. The Butler unit would have served both voluntary and involuntary patients, and patients arriving at Kent's emergency room in crisis would have been given rides to Butler. The plan required Health Department approval.

Dr. Robert E. Baute, Kent's president, said in a statement yesterday that both the hospital and the Health Department heard from many people saying that Kent's unit "was very important to them." People said they wanted a psychiatric unit located in Warwick and that patients found Kent's unit more comfortable and less frightening than others.

"We have listened to those concerns," Baute said.

So the hospital scrapped the plans. Instead, it will add nine beds to its unit at Butler. And it will involve Butler staff in working with psychiatric patients hospitalized at Kent. This new "consultative liaison service" will give Kent patients "access to a broad range of mental health specialists and sub-specialists from Butler," according to a hospital statement.