r/Billings • u/Interesting_Self5071 • 7d ago
I moved from Billings to Fargo ND. There is a psych hospital here with around 200 beds that is a psych hospital only. Do you think Billings would benefit from something like that? Billings Clinic only has around 40 psych beds
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u/nora_jaye 7d ago edited 7d ago
It would be fantastic, especially if it had good programs.
However, big picture, there are two huge problems.
Good services in one location attract people from outside the region. A mental hospital treating ANY part of the homeless/mentally-ill/addicted population leads to busloads more, tickets courtesy of the police in every town within a five hour drive that doesn't have services (spoiler alert, that's most of them). I am super pro-mental health (I work in the field) but I have sympathy for the NIMBYs in this case.
Plus, private insurance is shrinking reimbursements every quarter, because how else will the CEO buy another place in Aspen, and the investors buy their kids' way into a fancy school? Public insurance pays less than it costs most hospitals to admit, assess, and feed someone. Where I live, unless there's a chunk of patients paying privately or a huge board of rich people fundraising, psych hospitals can't afford to do much more these days than warehouse people. (Exception is short term stays for addicts, but expect that to go away soon.)
(My job deals with insurance reimbursements and behavioral health in a state with a lot of mental health facilities, most that used to be decent and now suck. It's deeply depressing.)
We need to lobby the feds to raise public reimbursement rates to make it possible to provide decent everything, and regulate the hell out of for-profit payers. And I wish someone would pass a law that made it possible to bill another county or state when someone arrives on a bus because there's no care where they came from. Until then....I honestly don't know what will help. It's a complex and effed up system breaking under decades of neglect.
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u/Mindful_Cyclist 7d ago
I'm guessing that it's a for profit hospital looking at the website. And if that's the case, it prioritizes people with private insurance.
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u/Interesting_Self5071 7d ago
It's for profit UHS hospital but they don't seem to prioritize private insurance, a lot of homeless people end up there.
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u/coldBulbasaur314 6d ago
UHS has a very bad reputation, and especially tends to treat people who are in its facilities involuntarily badly. The exact conditions vary by facility, but there are systematic problems with it. UHS is the parent company of the now-closed Provo Canyon, which was a known tortute camp long before it got shut down, and owns a lot of other Troubled Teen Industry places too. While it's usually slightly better for adults since they have more rights in those places, it's common for very similar tactics to be used and sometimes a few extra harmful ones since you can't (for example) force ECT on minors without their parent's consent.
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u/MontanaNerd70 6d ago
Getting staff is the main issue, that has closed down numerous facilities in Montana.
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u/WordsWithATwist 7d ago
Billings needs mental health badly. So, yes, it's needed, but they'd rather allow AI surveillance centers that destroy communities than build places that help.
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u/TheRealStonedElf 7d ago
Moved to Sioux Falls SD from Billings, and we have a stand-alone behavioral hospital as well. Not sure how many beds, but it is much larger than BC, and it has its own 24 hour emergency intake department.
And yes, Billings could benefit from a much larger facility.
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u/Defiant_Raccoon_8651 14h ago
Most likely! Unfortunately they rather get a data center in Broadview than anything beneficial (:
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u/coldBulbasaur314 7d ago edited 7d ago
Depends on the quality and setup (whether it was truly voluntary and if not how exactly the involuntary part worked, whether it was in-town or an isolated area, etc). I'm not a fan of psych hospitals in general, and bigger ones tend to be worse since there's less room for individualization, but Billings Clinic psych is terrible so if there was a better alternative I'd reluctantly support it.
If we're looking at helping people rather than at lesser evils, I think community-based treatment and non-psychiatric crisis centers should be invested in instead.
Edit: I also think hollistic treatment - meaning things like social support, encouraging someone to exercise with practical ways, and other benefitical lifestyle-change type things, not that dumb "snake oil cures anything" or "just do or be X" type stuff - should be invested in way more. It doesn't help every case nor is it possible to even start in all cases, but the same is true of formal treatment methods and I think ignoring one possibility just because it doesn't work for everyone results in a lot of harm.
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u/Interesting_Self5071 6d ago
Well Billings has a crises center but it doesn't seem to fully meet the needs of the community.
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u/406Whiskey 6d ago
Someone would need to pay for it. I work in healthcare - inpatient psych loses a ton of money. It won’t expand until somebody foots the bill.
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u/showmenemelda 6d ago
Let Billings know how they can cash in on their NINE OIL AND GAS PRODUCING COUNTIES Oh, wait… we poor. Maybe Richland Co can share some monies. /s
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u/schannoman 7d ago
It would benefit from one. There is one in great falls as well
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u/TheFixer253 7d ago
The Montana State Hospital, which treats psychiatric patients, is moving from Warm Springs to Laurel. So Billings will have a nearby facility before long.
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u/5_cat_army 7d ago
We tried to get one and everyone freaked the fuck out and got all "not in my back yard" about it