<\/p>\n
A big change is on the way when it comes to community based behavioral health services.<\/p>\n
The Barber National Institute is stepping away from those service lines, and LECOM Behavioral Health has agreed to step in, assume their clients and Barber Behavioral Health staff, as the hospital system expands its role in the community.<\/p>\n
The Barber National Institute has been providing community based behavioral health services for 25 years. As part of this realignment, they\u2019ll be letting go of 50 counselors, therapists and behavioral health employees working in Erie and Warren counties.<\/p>\n
But LECOM Behavioral Health, already working in this space, is ready to continue the services to support not only the clients, but to hire the Barber staff too, and make it a seamless transition for all who will be impacted by the change.<\/p>\n
Leaders of both institutions are calling it a coordinated realignment of behavioral health services. After serious evaluation, Barber National Institute leadership determined that community based behavioral health needs are no longer aligned with their 75-year-mission with roots as an educational institution. Senior Vice President Robert Barber believes that LECOM Behavioral Health offers the solution. “This is not a merger or an acquisition,\u201d Barber said, \u201cthis is really just that we wanted to create a soft landing for each of the patients so we reached out to LECOM, we’ve established this temporary relationship to create that pipeline for our patients and the staff members.”<\/p>\n
LECOM, already with 3,000 clients and some 250 behavioral health staff agreed that assuming Barber Behavioral Health standalone programs makes sense, and should strengthen outcomes. Dr. Danielle Hansen, Regional President of LECOM Health said, “We have already all of the existing services that the Barber center is going to stop doing, so it was fairly easy for us to expand each of those services, bring their staff over, bring the patients over, to be able to continue making sure the patients receive the care they need.\u201d<\/p>\n
That care includes outpatient therapy, and blended case management, but primarily it is family based mental health therapy in homes, and intensive behavioral health services for kids – including accompanying them to school and community activities.<\/p>\n
Again the shift will impact 50 Barber Behavioral Health staff, but LECOM has agreed to bring those staff members into their community based programs at the same level of pay, status and seniority. \u201cOur intent is to hire all of those folks, we’re going to offer every one of them a position,\u201d Dr. Hansen said. \u201cWe’ll have to add some jobs to be able to support things too, because we’ll be increasing services,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Barber National Institute officials want to make it clear that behavioral health services will be continuing for those at the core of their educational mission and that is children and adults with intellectual disabilities or with autism, who also face behavioral challenges.<\/p>\n
That includes a wealth of services like early intervention, Camp Connections, children\u2019s acute and school based partial hospitalization, rapid response, parent autism support group, and site-based school consultative services. \u201cWe look at this as really an opportunity for us to refocus those resources on those areas where we believe that we are experts and we can have the greatest impact in that it will be sustainable into the future,\u201d Robert Barber said.<\/p>\n
Barber National Institute planned to informed its employees and clients and formalized the announcement on Monday April 13. LECOM and Barber leadership expect the transition to be finished at the end of June. LECOM says for a family receiving services, one day their therapist will arrive with a Barber Behavioral Health badge on, the next they will be wearing a LECOM badge, but the services and relationships should be uninterrupted.<\/p>\n
Barber National Institute officials said although they are coordinating this change in delivery of services with LECOM, they\u2019ll be talking with all of their clients, who will have a choice if they wish to seek a different service provider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A big change is on the way when it comes to community based behavioral health services. The Barber…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[74168,74163,8676,11000,136,138,137,74164,74165,74167,74166],"class_list":["post-164584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-autism-support","tag-barber-national-institute","tag-behavioral-health","tag-community-services","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-lecom-behavioral-health","tag-mental-health-therapy","tag-outpatient-therapy","tag-staff-transition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}