Leadership | 01.05.24
Gardner Hospital Reopens Mental Health Unit After Years-Long Struggle to Hire Clinicians
by WGBH News
During the peak of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, Heywood Hospital in Gardner, Massachusetts, offered physicians and therapists a $50,000 sign-on bonus to work in its mental health unit. "We still couldn't get enough clinicians," recalled Heywood co-CEO Rozanna Penney. "We also offered tuition reimbursement, retention bonuses. But there just weren't enough of them." The community-owned healthcare system struggled to retain clinicians amid a worsening mental health crisis and ultimately had to shutter its mental health unit in 2021. Now, the hospital is finally staffed enough to reopen six beds, with a goal of recruiting enough clinicians to eventually support a 12-bed unit. Penney remarked, "Just because we don't have beds doesn't mean that people don't come to the hospital. They just end up staying in the emergency room, which isn't a good environment for them." Nine patients are presently receiving mental health care in the 20-bed Heywood ER, and some will move into the facility with its grant-funded sensory room, enhanced security measures, and specially trained staff and security personnel.
Read more.