Cuts Posed For Orofino Hospital Plan Calls For Shifting Patients To Community-Based Services

One of Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Director Linda Caballero’s administrators has outlined a plan to shrink the population of State Hospital North through attrition starting in March.

But Caballero said her department will objectively evaluate the whole mental health system, not just State Hospital North.

The plan proposes a shift to community-based services.

Under the plan, contracts for drug abuse treatment and mental health services could be awarded starting in June in the communities where the patients live, rather than at the hospital in Orofino.

Roseanne Hardin, Health and Welfare’s family and community services director in Boise, said her Oct. 17 memo to Caballero was only a “working document” with broad concepts.

The agency is ready to issue a request for information from private providers about different approaches for providing services offered at State Hospital North and State Hospital South in Blackfoot, Hardin said.

Caballero said there is no predetermined answer to the department’s evaluation of mental health services.

“We will begin an objective process designed to meet the goals outlined for us by the Interim (Legislative) Committee on Mental Health,” she wrote in a Dec. 9 memo to Sen. Marguerite McLaughlin, an Orofino Democrat.

The committee called on Health and Welfare to explore the roles of the two state hospitals and determine if their services could be provided effectively in communities where patients live.

The 60-bed State Hospital North employs about 104 people. There are 20 beds in its psychiatric unit and 40 others split between drug treatment and a combination of mental health and drug treatment.

The annual budget for State Hospital North is $5.4 million. State Hospital South’s is $14 million.