Thursday, December 09, 1999
Mental health agencies merge
Move should cut costs, paperwork; no layoffs planned
BY TIM BONFIELD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Three of Hamilton County's largest mental health agencies will merge operations effective Monday.
The move will combine organizations that serve more than 8,000 people a year and employ more than 450. Their combined budget of $23 million a year comprises about a third of all spending from the taxpayer-supported Hamilton County Community Mental Health Board.
A new company called Mental Health Partners will run the Central Clinic, CRI and Queen City/Mitchell Mental Health Services. Executives with the agencies said Wednesday the restructuring will help control costs and improve care by eliminating overlapping services and unnecessary red tape. No layoffs are expected.
The restructuring is the second large mental health service reorganization to occur this year. In January, Talbert House merged with West by Northwest and Mental Health East.
Ultimately, the Mental Health Partners group hopes to expand services.
“With better treatment today, more people can recover from major mental illness,” said Walter Smitson, executive director of Central Clinic. “We don't think of maintaining mentally ill persons for the rest of their lives in an institution.”
That means more mentally ill people will need more kinds
of help — from counseling to housing to job training — so they can function in the community.
Central Clinic provides a wide range of counseling services for the severely mentally ill. Queen City/Mitchell offers a variety of case management services. CRI focuses on vocational training.
Some mentally ill residents already use services from all three agencies. Yet they have had to deal with each one as if they were unconnected — filling out duplicate intake, consent and confidentiality forms and so on.
The new company has been in the works for a year. Part of the idea stems from messages sent by Hamilton County commissioners more than a year ago as they approved putting an increased mental health levy on the ballot (which passed in November 1998).
The Community Mental Health Board has contracts with about 40 local agencies — which critics have said is too many to be efficient. “The county commissioners made it clear that they expect agencies to work more together,” Dr. Smitson said.
Patrick Tribbe, president and chief executive of the Community Mental Health Board, praised the planned merger. “With agencies that are primarily funded with public dollars, one of our goals has been to find better ways of doing business. This is a move in that direction.”
Overall, the merged operations are expected to cut costs by at least 5 percent while possibly increasing the numbers of clients using the services.
In the next several months, many job duties will be shifted but no layoffs are expected, officials said. Some jobs will be eliminated over time as people retire or take other jobs.
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