Supervisors unanimously vote to add 20 mental health beds at SRMC

REDDING — Shasta County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday, Sept. 11, to adopt a resolution designating Shasta Regional Medical Center as an inpatient psychiatric facility to help meet the mental health needs of the community. The move will add twenty new – and local – mental health beds to the sixteen beds currently offered at Restpadd Psychiatric Health Facility in Redding.

Under the new agreement, Shasta Regional Medical Center will be able to provide 72-hour treatment and evaluation, 14-day intensive treatment, and 30-day intensive treatment, as deemed necessary by mental health professionals.

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This week’s vote includes a three-year, $7.5 million agreement to provide inpatient psychiatric hospitalization services for both voluntary and involuntary care and will keep mental health patients needing inpatient treatment within Shasta County, rather than be transported out of county to receive necessary treatment.

“What ends up happening is we send them to Santa Rosa, to Vacaville, to Sacramento to other inpatient psychiatric placements,” Paige Greene of Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency recently told KRCR.

As it stands now, Restpadd in Redding – which opened April, 2013 as an acute care psychiatric facility has only sixteen beds for inpatient treatment and this week’s agreement will more than double the number of beds available.

“I’m super excited because it adds twenty more … inpatient psychiatric beds for us to use in our community,” said Paige.

The three-year agreement for services not only includes hospital room and board, but will also include medications, psychiatric time, and laboratory work, all coordinated with Shasta County clinical staff. Also, because Shasta Regional is a full-service hospital, staff will be able to treat co-occurring medical conditions as well.

Officials say the agreement will clear up the emergency room and shorten emergency room wait times, potentially allowing doctors to treat more patients.

“The patients that are currently in our emergency rooms now both here and other emergency rooms in Shasta will have a place to go instead of being bottle necked up and staying in the emergency rooms,” said Casey Fatch, Chief Executive Officer at Shasta Regional Medical Center.

Having more local beds for area residents will also allow for an easier discharge process and speed up the process of patient transition, potentially allowing for an increase in the overall number of mental health patients able to be treated annually.

After hearing of the Board of Supervisor’s unanimous vote, many Redding and Shasta County residents took to social media praising the resolution’s adoption.

“This is absolutely wonderful news. This will be a great service to our county,” area resident June Hibbard wrote on social media after learning of the resolution’s passage. “So many people were being transferred to other counties for help.”

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In social media posts that received hundreds of comments, reactions, and shares, countless area residents thanked the Board of Supervisors and others who were instrumental in passing the resolution, including Loralee Renfro who wrote, “Thank you for your diligence in this matter (Les Baugh, Shasta County Board of Supervisors – District 5)!! Sadly too many people still do not understand the importance of being able receive treatment for mental health illness.”

“This is awesome,” one former Redding resident who now resides in Vail, Colordao, Amanda Eno, wrote after reading an update about the resolution.

“Redding has had a serious deficit in treating mental health for a long time,” Eno continued. “Fixing our community’s mental health problem will help in so many aspects!”

Nadine Bailey agreed, writing, “In the end I think this will save us money, lives and heartbreak.”

James Simpson, who said he has lived in the Redding and Anderson areas for 12 years, later told SCNS he “could not be happier” about the adopted resolution and agreement for new local mental health treatment and services.

“Mental health problems affect people of all ages, all nationalities, all religions, all incomes, all walks of life,” he explained.

“Nobody is immune,” Simpson continued. “One way or another, mental health issues touch every single one of us, whether directly or indirectly. Shasta County really needed this and thankfully our board of supervisors agreed.”

 

Contact the writer: [email protected]

Trevor Montgomery, 47, recently moved to the Intermountain area of Shasta County from Riverside County and runs Riverside County News Source and Shasta County News Source. Additionally, he writes for several other news organizations; including Riverside County based newspapers, Valley News, The Valley Chronicle, and Anza Valley Outlook; as well as Bonsall/Fallbrook Village News in San Diego County and Mountain Echo in Shasta County.

Trevor spent 10 years in the U.S. Army as an Orthopedic Specialist before joining the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department in 1998. He was medically retired after losing his leg, breaking his back, and suffering both spinal cord and brain injuries in an off-duty accident. (Click here to see segment of Discovery Channel documentary of Trevor’s accident.)

During his time with the sheriff’s department, Trevor worked at several different stations; including Robert Presley Detention Center, Southwest Station in Temecula, Hemet/Valle Vista Station, Ben Clark Public Safety Training Center, and Lake Elsinore Station; along with other locations.

Trevor’s assignments included Corrections, Patrol, DUI Enforcement, Boat and Personal Water-Craft based Lake Patrol, Off-Road Vehicle Enforcement, Problem Oriented Policing Team, and Personnel/Background Investigations. He finished his career while working as a Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Investigator and was a court-designated expert in child abuse and child sex-related crimes.

Trevor has been married for more than 28 years and was a foster parent to more than 60 children over 13 years. He is now an adoptive parent and his “fluid family” includes 13 children and 14 – but soon to be 16 – grandchildren.