Psychiatry Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

New Child Psychiatric Hospital Opens In Wheeling

A new psychiatric hospital focusing on children and adolescents opened Monday in the Northern Panhandle.

Orchard Park Hospital in Wheeling is for youth ages 5 to 18 years who are in immediate need of acute psychiatric care.

The 30-bed hospital will provide acute mental health care for children and teens in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Cory Carr, hospital administrator, explained that, in the event of a psychiatric crisis, the facility can provide patients 24-hour services in order to stabilize them including group therapy, individual therapy and consultations with doctors.

“The key to all of that is to find stabilization,” he said. “We want to find if medication is what they need, if a new coping mechanism is what they need, the goal is to find what they need to stabilize them and reintroduce them into the community.”

Jacquelyn Knight, Orchard Park’s CEO, said there has been a gap in service in the region for several years, and children’s need for psychiatric services has only increased since the pandemic.

“Between the pandemic and the different things kids go through with cyberbullying and social media and just societal pressures, there’s a lot of stress to be a kid. It’s very, very hard,” she said. “There are times when they just need help dealing with some of those mental health crises. We’re really fortunate that we’re able to meet that need now.”

Knight said The Children’s Home of Wheeling took over the facility of another psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents, the Byrd Center, that closed in 2019, to create Orchard Park Hospital.

She said Orchard Park Hospital is actively hiring.

“We are still actively hiring mental health technicians, nurses and kitchen staff to work here at the hospital,” she said. “It’s a very rewarding career choice, you get to make a difference in the lives of kids that are really in need. We’d love to bring some more wonderful people on our team.”

Medicare Stops Payments at Psychiatric Hospital

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says Medicare has halted payments to a West Virginia psychiatric hospital because it is not in compliance with the program’s requirements for a psychiatric hospital.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports Medicare will not make payments for beneficiaries who are admitted to William R. Sharpe, Jr. Hospital effective Wednesday. Officials say it will continue to make payments for up to 30 days for beneficiaries admitted before Wednesday.

The department’s termination letter does not specify the requirements with which the Weston hospital did not comply, but state officials said they were aware of the details.

“The main reasons for the decision were due to inadequate documentation and insufficient treatment plans and follow up,” DHHS spokeswoman Allison Adler said. “Secretary (Bill) Crouch continues to work with CMS regarding this issue in regards to the final determination.”

She added, “The health and well-being of the patients will remain our priority.”

Federal officials did not respond to the newspaper’s request for additional information about the Sharpe Hospital termination.

Sharpe Hospital is one of two state-run psychiatric hospitals in West Virginia. The 150-bed acute-care facility opened in 1994.

WVU Telepsychiatry Program Expands Services

West Virginia University’s Telepsychiatry Program received a $1.2 million grant this week from the Health Resources and Services Administration to expand telemedicine services in four West Virginia counties.

Through videoconferencing, psychiatric and pediatric specialists at WVU are able to provide behavioral health, obesity, diabetes, asthma and oral health services to underserved areas of West Virginia.

Currently, members of the WVU Telepsychiatry team serves thousands of residents in 17 West Virginia counties.

With the new money, the program will collaborate with rural school-based health centers in Barbour, McDowell and Pocahontas counties and a community-based organization, Power House, in Wyoming County.

According to a press release, school-based health clinics are “natural partners for telepsychiatry treatment, because they often serve as the hub of health care and social services for rural communities.”

The program hopes to improve detection of students at high risk for behavioral and mental health problems. It also aims to determine the prevalence of oral health issues, asthma, obesity and type 2 diabetes in students using the telepsychiatric consultation services.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.

Marshall School of Medicine Approved for Psychiatry Residency Program

The Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine announced Thursday they have been approved to start a psychiatry residency program. Marshall’s program will become only the third in the state to train the specialists experts say the region desperately needs.

Administrators at the Marshall University School of Medicine see substance abuse as just one of many problems the new psychiatry residency program can impact. Dr. Suzanne Holroyd is the new chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral medicine.

“There is a huge underserved need for substance abuse training at all levels including psychiatry in this state and so our residents are going to get a wonderful treatment in that,” Holroyd said.

The school of medicine has been awarded initial accreditation by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education to offer a psychiatry training program beginning in 2015. The ACGME is the national body responsible for post-doctoral training programs in the U.S. Holroyd said with more psychiatrists in the region, problems like substance abuse can be better handled.

“They’ll be learning very specific things about diagnosis and treatment in specific psychiatric illnesses, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, panic disorders, eating disorders, substance abuse disorders, all of which are huge problem that have a huge economic and social and functional impact on the community and families and individuals,” Holroyd said.

Holroyd said there is a lack of psychiatrists not just in the state or region, but throughout the country. She said the program like this could help the region start to catch many of the problems at the beginning, when patients are young.

“There are so many issues for children, depression, bullying, eating disorders, stress and all kinds of things, ADHD and again our residents will be learning all those kinds of information and specific diagnosis and treatments, because ideally it’s best to treat people while young and be preventative if possible,” Holroyd said.

The psychiatry residency will be a four-year program that will begin recruiting Year 1 residents in the fall of 2014 for training beginning July 1, 2015. The residents will do their training at seven sites in the area including Cabell Huntington Hospital, Marshall Psychiatry, Mildred Mitchell Bateman State Hospital, Prestera Center for Community Mental Health, River Park Hospital, St. Mary’s Medical Center and the Huntington Veterans Affairs Medical Center, all of which are located in Huntington.

Dr. Joseph Shapiro is the dean of the School of Medicine.

“If you think about the general health of the community, the problems of substance abuse, of obesity, metabolic syndrome, these things all go hand-in-glove,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro said the development of a solid psychiatric program can mean better healthcare all around.

“Even though many of the issues that we’re talking about are handled by our primary care providers, the training of these providers can be done more optimally if we have a robust psychiatric and behavioral sciences group,” Shapiro said.

Marshall will be the third psychiatry residency program in West Virginia, joining West Virginia University-Morgantown and West Virginia University-Charleston Area Medical Center.