The move is also partially the result of Nebraska’s mental health reform plan, outlined more than two years ago to move more services for adults with serious mental illness out of the state’s mental hospitals and into local communities and to close two of the three state regional centers.

Hastings, which now has two psychiatrists board certified in adolescent services, currently operates a 40-bed substance abuse treatment program for teens from the two youth prisons in Kearney and Geneva, Gibson noted.

Some of the staff will fill vacant positions and the rest will be used to cover jobs as employees take part in training sessions this winter and spring.

Fifty employees at a time will participate in an intensive training program aimed at changing the center’s workplace culture, Gibson said.

The state this winter will renovate the building now used by the teen program and it will be used for adult programs starting next summer, Gibson said.

As Norfolk is downsized, the Lincoln regional center will provide the initial acute care services for all adults when there is not an acute care program for them in a home community.

The goal of adult acute care will be to stabilize patients and move them as quickly as possible out of the state hospital and into community programs, he said.

“There is no reason for people to stay in an acute level of care longer than needed. This will allow us to turn the beds over faster,” Gibson said.

This will be a change in culture for some employees. “It is my experience that for 50 years the state has taken the opposite approach. It has been excruciatingly painful to get people out of the regional center,” Gibson said.

Though regional centers are not closing, the state is making progress on mental health reform, creating more services in local communities, said Ron Sorensen, behavioral health administrator for Health and Human Services.

Health and Human Services should be able to reduce the number of people in Norfolk because of the new services now starting in the Omaha area, said state Sen. Jim Jensen of Omaha, who spearheaded the reform plan.

Nebraska officials are currently trying to determine how successful they have been at getting more federal Medicaid dollars to help pay for behavioral health services, Sorensen said.

Medicaid doesn’t generally pay for mental health services in a state hospital but does help pay for services provided in a community setting.

“It feels good that community based services are coming up,” said Topher Hansen, director of a Lincoln treatment program, CenterPointe, and a member of the steering committee overseeing mental health reform.

A small 15-bed unit for adults who have developmental disabilities and serious mental illness and are considered too dangerous to live in local communities operates at Hastings, but is run by the Beatrice State Developmental Center.

But the Norfolk center is expected to drop to about 60 patients by next summer, caring for adults who need long-term care and the overflow from the sex offender program in Lincoln, according to Ron Sorensen, behavior health administrator for the Health and Human Services System.

Lincoln’s patient load will remain unchanged, around 250 to 260. But the Lincoln center is evolving into an adult only campus which will handle all adults who need acute care.

This is cache, read story here