February 16, 2004
Brand new day | Spring Harbor Hospital's impending move to Westbrook is just part of its mission to bring mental health services to southern Maine
By Jess Kilby
Six years ago the future looked dim for mental health care in southern Maine. In March 1998, the region's only psychiatric hospital, the South Portland-based Jackson Brook Institute, founded in 1984, filed for bankruptcy. The following month seven of the hospital's 12 physicians resigned, having gone unpaid for more than two weeks. By July of that year, the facility was operating at a deficit of $386,000 and relying on both state aid and private loans to make payroll. Observers worried that JBI would not survive much longer without a buyer.
Now, though, the future couldn't look more promising for the entity that has risen from the ashes of JBI. That entity, Spring Harbor Hospital, is set to move into a new, $29 million facility in Westbrook on March 10. The new Spring Harbor, which will provide inpatient care for adults and children with severe mental illness, has more beds, more square footage, more acreage, more programming for staff and patients, and a more welcoming image than its predecessor. Spring Harbor CEO Dennis King attributes this dramatic turnaround to a committed staff and a clear-headed strategic plan that has relied heavily on partnerships and community input. "We started with a core of very dedicated clinical staff who stayed with [JBI] through all the troubles," King says, "so we were able to keep a positive clinical picture in place. And we were fortunate in recruiting other clinical leadership folks who saw this as an opportunity."
The "this" King refers to is the $7 million purchase of JBI by Maine Medical Center in early 1999. In April of that year, JBI and its affiliated outpatient services, Smith House Counseling Centers, became, respectively, Spring Harbor Hospital of Maine Medical Center and Spring Harbor Counseling. It was a win-win situation for both hospitals, says King. "We were instantly able to form a network with the department of psychiatry at Maine Medical Center," he says. "We were able to tie together the two servicesˆ so it made a much more cohesive network than had existed before." In 2001 Spring Harbor forged another important partnership when it became the psychiatric hospital of MaineHealth, a network of nonprofit care providers that spans southern, central and western Maine.
At the same time Spring Harbor was establishing its formative relationship with Maine Medical Center, the hospital was bringing together another crucial asset: its community board of directors. "Jackson Brook Institute was for-profit ˆ it didn't have a community board of directors," King notes. "We of course are not-for-profit and we have [a board] now. Also, there are people on the board who have used the service, which is very unique."
The new Spring Harbor Hospital, which will remain tightly integrated with MMC's psychiatric program ˆ the two share a chief medical officer, and King administers both programs ˆ is something of an anomaly in the mental health industry, one analyst says. "The fact that they are building a behavioral health care facility, particularly one for in-patient services, seems to mark a movement away from a trend to de-institutionalize patients nationally and put them into halfway houses ˆ or, as we all know, some end up on the streets," says Sandy Steever, editor of Health Care M&A Monthly, which is published by Connecticut-based Irving Levin Associates. "I think it's a welcome movement away from this trend to see more attention being given to behavioral health, which has languished over the past several years."
Salvaging resources
For Maine Medical Center, buying the bankrupt JBI was a logical choice. With 88 adult inpatient beds to MMC's 26, JBI was a competitor with valuable resources. "Integrating the mental health offerings of the two organizations represented an opportunity to reduce expenses while simultaneously enhancing access to quality mental health care," says Gail Wilkerson, chief of marketing and communications for Spring Harbor. She notes that the now-integrated Spring Harbor and MMC mental health offerings have "no service redundancies and have resulted in improved access to inpatient services by more than 100% over the past five years."
To reach this goal, MMC funded its new acquisition with $1.5 million in startup equity. King was brought in as CEO during the summer of 1998, Wilkerson says, "as JBI continued its downward spiral." Once the purchase was approved by the Department of Human Services, King began assembling his senior management team, a team that was almost complete when the reinvented facility, renamed Spring Harbor, opened its doors on April 1, 1999.
A three-year strategic plan, approved by Spring Harbor's board in the fall of 1999, targeted six key programming points: becoming financially stable; identifying unmet community needs; determining how to meet those needs; improving the integration of services, particularly in regard to outpatient clinics; transferring the psychiatric residency program from MMC to Spring Harbor and creating an effective teaching environment; and supporting the mission of the MMC Research Institute. Longer term, Spring Harbor's strategy also included moving out of the leased JBI building on Running Hill Road and into a facility that better met the needs of the hospital's patients and staff.
In addition to the strategic plan, King says, Spring Harbor also conducted a master-facility plan that examined the architectural side of what the hospital required. To that end, King says, "there was the question of how much space did we need, and how did we deal with the current building we were in, because it was deficient for the current purposes. It hadn't been maintained very well during the bankruptcy."
To determine both spatial and programming needs, King says Spring Harbor's planning department did "the usual demographic studies." He says it also conducted a careful scan of the community to determine if there were any unmet needs. "This might sound like an incredibly difficult thing to do, but really it's not hard to figure out," he says. "You simply have to look at what happens in hospital emergency rooms around the state [regarding care for the mentally ill], and you know what happens with certain populations. For instance, those people with serious mental health problems, there's no place for them to goˆ you know from ongoing statistics that you need so many beds."
The ideal facility that emerged from all this planning was a 33-acre expanse in Westbrook, which included plans for a building with twice as many private rooms as the old JBI facility, 25% more square footage (85,835 sq. ft., to be exact), and the only in-patient program in the state for children and adolescents with autism and other developmental disorders. The 100-bed hospital is an increase of five beds from the old hospital, and has more space for families, staff training and community meetings. It also boasts a far cozier appearance than JBI, both inside and out. Construction on the new facility began in June 2002 and the final touches are now being completed. The $29 million price tag was covered largely through a tax-exempt $25 million bond issued by the Maine Health & Higher Education Finance Authority.
"I joke that we have the only wooden building in the state that was painted to look like it was concrete," King says of the JBI building in South Portland. "We realized we needed something more residential, less institutional, more welcoming to patients. We talked about a building with a human scale and a human touch to it, and with that you start to think of familiar imagery: clapboards, sloped roofs, peaked roofs. There are many people who think the current building is intimidating."
King is proud of the fact that, almost exclusively, the new hospital was built with local labor. The building was designed by Portland-based MorrisSwitzer Environments for Health, and construction was managed by HP Cummings of Winthrop. Johnson & Jordan of Scarborough did the mechanicals, Favreau's Electric of Brunswick wired the electrical systems, and Newman Concrete of Hallowell poured the concrete. "I can go on and on," King says, "but it's real nice to see local people involved. And that was important to our board, by the way; they really emphasized local work."
Though the hospital won't pay property taxes due to its nonprofit status, Westbrook Economic and Community Development Director Erik Carson is confident that Spring Harbor will continue to have a positive impact on the local economy. "I think there is the likelihood of other allied businesses that provide services to the hospital [opening in Westbrook], as well as the potential expansion of existing businesses, those that supply equipment and such," he says. "And depending on how staff travel to the site, there's ancillary benefits for gas stations [and] the Hannaford grocery store on William Clark Drive."
Looking at the big picture, Carson says that having an institution like Spring Harbor come to town "begets other interest" in the area ˆ a key consideration for Westbrook, which is aggressively trying to attract a variety of new businesses to its downtown and surrounding areas. "In some cases that doesn't work well, by virtue of what gets displaced," he says. "But I think in this case we have sufficient land to develop."
For Spring Harbor, the future is not so much a new chapter as it is a continuation of the hospital's original mission: to streamline and improve mental health care in Maine. King says his staff will focus on research and training, and will continue to work on the trademark partnerships that have been a key to Spring Harbor's success.
"If we can develop a best practice with the people who refer patients to us and who we refer patients to, we think we'll be able to provide a much better continuity of care," he says. "It's not a very well-connected system, as I'm sure you've read, and we'd like to make some inroads in making it more cohesive."
Now, though, the future couldn't look more promising for the entity that has risen from the ashes of JBI. That entity, Spring Harbor Hospital, is set to move into a new, $29 million facility in Westbrook on March 10. The new Spring Harbor, which will provide inpatient care for adults and children with severe mental illness, has more beds, more square footage, more acreage, more programming for staff and patients, and a more welcoming image than its predecessor. Spring Harbor CEO Dennis King attributes this dramatic turnaround to a committed staff and a clear-headed strategic plan that has relied heavily on partnerships and community input. "We started with a core of very dedicated clinical staff who stayed with [JBI] through all the troubles," King says, "so we were able to keep a positive clinical picture in place. And we were fortunate in recruiting other clinical leadership folks who saw this as an opportunity."
The "this" King refers to is the $7 million purchase of JBI by Maine Medical Center in early 1999. In April of that year, JBI and its affiliated outpatient services, Smith House Counseling Centers, became, respectively, Spring Harbor Hospital of Maine Medical Center and Spring Harbor Counseling. It was a win-win situation for both hospitals, says King. "We were instantly able to form a network with the department of psychiatry at Maine Medical Center," he says. "We were able to tie together the two servicesˆ so it made a much more cohesive network than had existed before." In 2001 Spring Harbor forged another important partnership when it became the psychiatric hospital of MaineHealth, a network of nonprofit care providers that spans southern, central and western Maine.
At the same time Spring Harbor was establishing its formative relationship with Maine Medical Center, the hospital was bringing together another crucial asset: its community board of directors. "Jackson Brook Institute was for-profit ˆ it didn't have a community board of directors," King notes. "We of course are not-for-profit and we have [a board] now. Also, there are people on the board who have used the service, which is very unique."
The new Spring Harbor Hospital, which will remain tightly integrated with MMC's psychiatric program ˆ the two share a chief medical officer, and King administers both programs ˆ is something of an anomaly in the mental health industry, one analyst says. "The fact that they are building a behavioral health care facility, particularly one for in-patient services, seems to mark a movement away from a trend to de-institutionalize patients nationally and put them into halfway houses ˆ or, as we all know, some end up on the streets," says Sandy Steever, editor of Health Care M&A Monthly, which is published by Connecticut-based Irving Levin Associates. "I think it's a welcome movement away from this trend to see more attention being given to behavioral health, which has languished over the past several years."
Salvaging resources
For Maine Medical Center, buying the bankrupt JBI was a logical choice. With 88 adult inpatient beds to MMC's 26, JBI was a competitor with valuable resources. "Integrating the mental health offerings of the two organizations represented an opportunity to reduce expenses while simultaneously enhancing access to quality mental health care," says Gail Wilkerson, chief of marketing and communications for Spring Harbor. She notes that the now-integrated Spring Harbor and MMC mental health offerings have "no service redundancies and have resulted in improved access to inpatient services by more than 100% over the past five years."
To reach this goal, MMC funded its new acquisition with $1.5 million in startup equity. King was brought in as CEO during the summer of 1998, Wilkerson says, "as JBI continued its downward spiral." Once the purchase was approved by the Department of Human Services, King began assembling his senior management team, a team that was almost complete when the reinvented facility, renamed Spring Harbor, opened its doors on April 1, 1999.
A three-year strategic plan, approved by Spring Harbor's board in the fall of 1999, targeted six key programming points: becoming financially stable; identifying unmet community needs; determining how to meet those needs; improving the integration of services, particularly in regard to outpatient clinics; transferring the psychiatric residency program from MMC to Spring Harbor and creating an effective teaching environment; and supporting the mission of the MMC Research Institute. Longer term, Spring Harbor's strategy also included moving out of the leased JBI building on Running Hill Road and into a facility that better met the needs of the hospital's patients and staff.
In addition to the strategic plan, King says, Spring Harbor also conducted a master-facility plan that examined the architectural side of what the hospital required. To that end, King says, "there was the question of how much space did we need, and how did we deal with the current building we were in, because it was deficient for the current purposes. It hadn't been maintained very well during the bankruptcy."
To determine both spatial and programming needs, King says Spring Harbor's planning department did "the usual demographic studies." He says it also conducted a careful scan of the community to determine if there were any unmet needs. "This might sound like an incredibly difficult thing to do, but really it's not hard to figure out," he says. "You simply have to look at what happens in hospital emergency rooms around the state [regarding care for the mentally ill], and you know what happens with certain populations. For instance, those people with serious mental health problems, there's no place for them to goˆ you know from ongoing statistics that you need so many beds."
The ideal facility that emerged from all this planning was a 33-acre expanse in Westbrook, which included plans for a building with twice as many private rooms as the old JBI facility, 25% more square footage (85,835 sq. ft., to be exact), and the only in-patient program in the state for children and adolescents with autism and other developmental disorders. The 100-bed hospital is an increase of five beds from the old hospital, and has more space for families, staff training and community meetings. It also boasts a far cozier appearance than JBI, both inside and out. Construction on the new facility began in June 2002 and the final touches are now being completed. The $29 million price tag was covered largely through a tax-exempt $25 million bond issued by the Maine Health & Higher Education Finance Authority.
"I joke that we have the only wooden building in the state that was painted to look like it was concrete," King says of the JBI building in South Portland. "We realized we needed something more residential, less institutional, more welcoming to patients. We talked about a building with a human scale and a human touch to it, and with that you start to think of familiar imagery: clapboards, sloped roofs, peaked roofs. There are many people who think the current building is intimidating."
King is proud of the fact that, almost exclusively, the new hospital was built with local labor. The building was designed by Portland-based MorrisSwitzer Environments for Health, and construction was managed by HP Cummings of Winthrop. Johnson & Jordan of Scarborough did the mechanicals, Favreau's Electric of Brunswick wired the electrical systems, and Newman Concrete of Hallowell poured the concrete. "I can go on and on," King says, "but it's real nice to see local people involved. And that was important to our board, by the way; they really emphasized local work."
Though the hospital won't pay property taxes due to its nonprofit status, Westbrook Economic and Community Development Director Erik Carson is confident that Spring Harbor will continue to have a positive impact on the local economy. "I think there is the likelihood of other allied businesses that provide services to the hospital [opening in Westbrook], as well as the potential expansion of existing businesses, those that supply equipment and such," he says. "And depending on how staff travel to the site, there's ancillary benefits for gas stations [and] the Hannaford grocery store on William Clark Drive."
Looking at the big picture, Carson says that having an institution like Spring Harbor come to town "begets other interest" in the area ˆ a key consideration for Westbrook, which is aggressively trying to attract a variety of new businesses to its downtown and surrounding areas. "In some cases that doesn't work well, by virtue of what gets displaced," he says. "But I think in this case we have sufficient land to develop."
For Spring Harbor, the future is not so much a new chapter as it is a continuation of the hospital's original mission: to streamline and improve mental health care in Maine. King says his staff will focus on research and training, and will continue to work on the trademark partnerships that have been a key to Spring Harbor's success.
"If we can develop a best practice with the people who refer patients to us and who we refer patients to, we think we'll be able to provide a much better continuity of care," he says. "It's not a very well-connected system, as I'm sure you've read, and we'd like to make some inroads in making it more cohesive."
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments