Kansas Mental Health System Undergoing Restructuring Amid Funding and Workforce Challenges
By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Mental health officials discussed the restructuring of mental health services in the state,and also the challenges of funding and workforce,during a High Plains Mental Health Center-sponsored town hall meeting in Hays on Tuesday night.
“To realize the importance of a network that is so tightly bound by the values involving timely access to high-quality mental health care, I think, is one of the cornerstones of our statewide system,” said kyle Kessler, executive director of the Kansas Association of Mental Health Centers.
Kansas has moved away from a community mental health center model to Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics.
Under the community mental health center model, all of the centers functioned differently and independently of each other.
The behavioral Health Clinic has set standards for the clinics and changed the way those clinics are funded.
In the 1990s, Kansas set about to move peopel who needed treatment for mental illness from inpatient hospitals to community outpatient treatment.
Kansas had more than 3,000 psychiatric inpatient beds, and many community and private hospitals also had psychiatric wings.
“It kept people from being in psychiatric hospitals for months and sometimes years at a time,” kessler said,”but in that process,Kansas overcorrected.”
As inpatient beds were decreased and hospitals closed,funding was supposed to follow those in need of care to community services.
Over time, policy priorities changed, kessler said.
Funding for mental health treatment was cut repeatedly by the state.In 2015 and 2016, $30 million, equal to 10% of state mental health funding, was cut.
“We saw substantial eroding of funding that was supposed to follow people back to the communities,” Kessler said.
And then even more hospital beds were cut.
Additional beds were cut at Ossawatomie State Hospital, and Topeka State Hospital, which had about 1,000 beds, was closed. The Rainbow mental health facility in Kansas City, which had 80 to 100 beds, closed.
“As recently as a month and a half ago, we had a waiting list of 30, and those were people who were deemed to be a danger to themselves or others by the courts and local authorities,” Kessler said.
The state established a Crisis Intervention Center model, which allowed people to be treated locally for short-term acute stays.
The goal was to help people without them having to go to state hospitals or engage with law enforcement or courts or end up incarcerated, Kessler said.
A new state hospital is set to open in Wichita in 2027, which should take some pressure off Larned and Osawatomie, he said.
“I think we are going to a good place as it relates to capacity,” Kessler said.
He said mental health advocates decided that if the system was going to receive renewed funding and grow, it should be rebuilt in a way that made the most sense to Kansas and was designed by Kansans.
