Tuesday, September 23, 1997
Harmony Family to open nonprofit psychiatric
hospital
By DOUG WILLIAMSON Business Editor
Harmony Family Services will open a nonprofit psychiatric hospital
for adults and children later this year.
The agency has purchased the 16.5-acre former Woods Behavioral
Healthcare System facilities on Industrial Boulevard in south
Abilene.
"In this move, Harmony Family Services is trying to meet
community needs. Harmony is traditionally a children's agency,"
said Doug Worthington, Harmony's executive director. "In
fact, our mission statement prohibited it (giving services to
adults). After a lot of discussions over several months, we decided
this was the best for the community."
Harmony will fill the local gap for indigent mental health
services for adults. Today, people with those problems are sent
to San Angelo, Dallas, Midland or Wichita Falls, he said.
Harmony youth clients receiving psychiatric services will be
moved from present facilities to the Woods location within 60
days. Adult services should be operating by Dec. 31.
Group homes and foster homes, run by Harmony, will remain in
their current locations. Harmony's property at North Third and
Grape will be sold.
Harmony will expand its 125-person workforce by about 35 to
open the facility. Worthington said that since Harmony has no
experience in treating adults, it will subcontract with another
psychiatric hospital for those services.
"We took out a three-year, $1.5-million loan to purchase
the facility and start up the operation. Since we are a nonprofit,
we will have to raise those funds in the next three years,"
Worthington said. "If Abilene wants mental health services,
it will have to help us raise the money."
The agency has no plans to ask for funds from the United Way
of Abilene, even though United Way officials approached Harmony
last year to investigate a solution to the problem left with Woods'
closure.
The Woods' facility includes eight buildings. The largest is
a 57,000-square-foot treatment facility. The facility can house
96 patients.
Woods closed in May 1996 due to financial pressures, mainly
from managed care systems' move to reduce the length of hospital
stays. Admissions were more to stabilize the patient, not to treat
the cause of the disorder, officials said. The patient load had
dropped from about 70 to 12-25 per day.
Worthington expects no more than 30 adults and about 60 children
to be housed there. They will be separated for housing, meals
and treatment.
Full-pay, third-party pay, Medicaid and indigent patients will
be served.
Worthington said the facility would compete for patients with
Red River Hospital in Wichita Falls, Rivercrest Hospital in San
Angelo and several facilities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
At the Monday afternoon press conference, Bernice Proctor,
who founded the Abilene Girls Home (predecessor of Harmony Family
Services) in 1965, said in the beginning there were six girls
in a leased home in Potosi.
"We planned to grow, but never dreamed of growing into
this," she said.
Everett Woods, founder of the facility, said, "Beth (his
wife) and I really were down when we had to close our dream after
25 years. When Doug (Worthington) and Mike (Waters of Hendrick
Health Systems) approached us, it was as though the heavens had
opened again. Our dream has been to drive by the campus and see
children playing ball and playing on the ropes course."
"We are embarking on the 21st century in good form,"
Worthington said.
Send a Letter to the Editor about This
Story | Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
Send the URL (Address) of This Story
to A Friend:
Copyright ©1997,
Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
|
