• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Morrisville, N.C., Company to Review Operation of Behavioral Health Center

Posted on: Wednesday, 13 July 2005, 21:00 CDT

Jul. 12--CenterPoint Human Services is spending about $20,000 to bring a Morrisville company in to review operations at struggling HopeRidge Center for Behavioral Health, CenterPoint's chief executive said.

Triumph LLC will provide management services for HopeRidge for about 60 days, before deciding whether to take over the company, chief executive Betty Taylor said.

Andy Hagler, the executive director of the Mental Health Association of Forsyth County, said yesterday that the proposed change could result in some indigent customers losing mental-heath services.

"We've got to minimize the people falling through the cracks," Hagler said.

Taylor said that CenterPoint will pay Triumph about $10,000 a month to temporarily run HopeRidge.

Triumph is a for-profit agency that provides behavioral-health care. Triumph officials did not return a call for comment on the company's plans.

HopeRidge, based in Winston-Salem on North Highland Avenue, provides behavioral programs for children and adults, including psychiatric and substance-abuse services.

It was spun off by CenterPoint last year as part of a 2001 state law requiring mental- and behavioral-health agencies to either offer behavioral-health services or oversee them, but not both. CenterPoint, also based in Winston-Salem, had also offered behavioral-health services.

HopeRidge provides services to about 7,000 customers. It owed CenterPoint about $3 million, mostly in loans provided by CenterPoint for startup costs, Taylor said.

CenterPoint officials said that the agency was never able to navigate the state's complicated reimbursement billing system and could not pay its debt.

If Triumph does decide to permanently take over HopeRidge, both customers and employees could see changes, she said.

HopeRidge has about 200 workers, but Taylor said that some employees could be laid off in the transition. She declined to say what changes may lie ahead.

"There are no guarantees that anybody can make," she said. "But there's a lot of quality people over" at HopeRidge, she said.

Taylor declined to point fingers at anyone within the struggling company.

"We did not see a financially viable management proposal for going forward, and that caused us a concern," she said. "We couldn't continue to fund HopeRidge's deficit."

Taylor said that most area customers would still receive behavioral-health care, but Hagler said he was skeptical.

If HopeRidge is subsumed by Triumph, indigent patients or those with less severe behavioral health problems could have trouble getting treatment at Triumph, he said.

"The reality of it is, before things get better, I think things are going to get worse," he said.

-----

To see more of the Winston-Salem Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.journalnow.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: Winston-Salem Journal

More News in this Category