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Chattanooga: Moccasin Bend closing building for chronically mentally ill

By: Emily Bregel
(Contact)

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William Ventress

Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute is transferring patients to its main campus from its long-term care facility, known as the Winston Building, which will shut down at the end of the week.

William Ventress, the hospital’s chief officer, said the 81-bed Winston Building’s closure is part of a long-planned overhaul of Moccasin Bend, which is near the foot of Lookout Mountain. Long-term care patients in the Winston Building now will be housed in the facility’s main building, where acute patients are treated, he said.

“We were looking at an overall census in the Winston Building that had been far below the bed capacity, and we saw an opportunity to achieve some efficiencies” through the consolidation, Mr. Ventress said.

Acute care patients are admitted under emergency commitment procedures and require intense oversight, Mr. Ventress said. Long-term-care patients, or subacute patients, have mental illness that is chronic in nature and requires longer periods of hospitalization before symptoms can be decreased, he said.

The transfer of the Winston Building’s 42 patients and hospital equipment will be complete by the end of the week, and the move is expected to save $1.3 million annually in operating expenses, Mr. Ventress said.

For years, the hospital’s average daily census has fallen short of its 172-bed capacity, and the hospital now is cutting down to 150 beds, said Jill Hudson, spokeswoman for the state Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities.

The Winston Building’s patients will be distributed among the main building’s newly renovated units, which have been updated to accommodate chronically mentally ill patients, who can have more freedom in their movements throughout the facility, Mr. Ventress said.

As part of the $2.3 million renovations to update the main building’s six units, the facility now has a privacy fence around a parklike area adjacent to the building that will serve the long-term care patients, Mr. Ventress said.

Dr. Fred Coats, a mental health advocate who, until this summer, was on Moccasin Bend’s board of trustees, said the hospital has been preparing for this change for years. Long-term-care patients now will live in newly modernized units that offer a more homelike atmosphere, said Dr. Coats, who also is secretary of the local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

The timing of the building’s closure was fortunate, he added, since the state recently mandated 22 job cuts at the facility to offset a budget shortfall.

The consolidation “came along at just the right time because they were going to be forced to make staff reductions, and closing the Winston Building effectively reduces the amount of staff that’s required,” he said.

Mr. Ventress acknowledged that some employees and patients have been apprehensive about the changes at the mental health facility, which opened in 1961.

“With any change, especially with a facility that’s been in existence as long as Moccasin Bend has been a part of Chattanooga, there’s always going to be misinformation, apprehensiveness. ... We’ve done a lot of work with orienting the patients, orienting the families and orienting the staff to this change,” he said.

City Councilman Manny Rico, a member of Moccasin Bend’s board of trustees for almost two years, said there has been strong support on the 19-person board for the consolidation of Moccasin Bend’s two buildings.

“It’s just a good business decision, we thought,” he said. “To have that few patients in a big building just didn’t make sense. With all the budget cuts and everything, you’ve got to count pennies.”

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