The recent revival of a program at Packard Mental Health Center that gives young doctors hands-on experience treating patients in a state psychiatric hospital will benefit the public in Springfield and throughout Illinois, supporters of the relaunch say.
"This will help create that pipeline of future psychiatrists to serve both in our state-operated facilities and our state-funded outpatient services," Dr. Kari Wolf, chairperson of psychiatry at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, said at an unveiling of the program on July 30. "This is one of the most exciting points in my entire career."
A $2 million annual contribution from the state allowed Southern Illinois University School of Medicine to revive the program, which stopped operating at Packard and the other state-operated psychiatric hospitals more than 10 years ago because of a lack of funding.
The funding stopped because of "different priorities" in previous gubernatorial administrations, according to Ryan Rollinson, chief of staff for the Illinois Department of Human Services' Division of Mental Health.
The funding will be used to pay residents and SIU faculty members who supervise them, officials said. The money also will cover administrative costs.
The Packard Psychiatry Residency Program, which began July 1, will take doctors who are training to become psychiatrists and place them in one of the 150-bed hospital's units at 901 Southwind Drive for parts of their first, second and fourth years.
Doctors who will participate are enrolled in either SIU's four-year psychiatric residency program or the medical school's five-year program combining internal medicine and psychiatry, Wolf said.
She and others who worked on the relaunch, the first of its kind in the state, said the residency rotation will help the state recruit more psychiatrists to its own hospitals.
Because of the nationwide shortage of psychiatrists, these specialists have their pick of settings in which to practice, and Wolf said new psychiatrists tend to gravitate after their residencies to settings they have been exposed to during training.
"I know how imperative it is for residents to get experience working in state facilities, working with this population, because once they interact with these wonderful individuals, they become hooked, and they want to continue this work for the rest of their careers," she said.
The Packard program will give SIU the resources to add two more students to each year of its psychiatry residency program. As a result, SIU will be able to produce more psychiatrists in the long run, Wolf said.
Residency programs serve newly minted doctors who have graduated from four-year medical schools such as SIU's.
Because of physician shortages, there can be long waits for psychiatric care locally, nationally and statewide, Wolf said. The majority of medical specialists produced by SIU end up spending their careers in Illinois, she said.
The restart of the Packard program at the hospital – previously known as McFarland Mental Health Center – means the number of students in each year of SIU's four-year psychiatric residency program will increase, beginning this year, to eight students from the current six.
Because psychiatric residents also spend time serving patients at outpatient mental health centers during their training, the additional psychiatric residents will mean more resources for outpatient centers operated in the Springfield area by SIU and nonprofit Memorial Behavioral Health, Wolf said.
DHS officials hope the Packard program will become a model for reviving relationships with other Illinois medical schools so their psychiatric residents can spend time during their training in other state-operated psychiatric hospitals, according to David Albert, director of the DHS Division of Mental Health.
"This relaunch represents more than just the beginning of a new residency program," he said. "It signifies a crucial opportunity to rebuild and rethink and refine our approach to behavioral health care, which has, in recent years, evolved dramatically."
The program is likely to "elevate the standard of care" at Packard, Albert said.
"There's great research that shows that care in a teaching hospital is superior to care where education isn't happening," he said.
"There's an energy that comes with training and an engagement with the work that is just very hard to do when you're not training young physicians," Albert said. "It's better for patients, it's better for staff, and it helps lift the quality of care."
The residency rotation will involve a minimum of two psychiatric residents working at any one time at Packard. Residents will spend a total of one or more months during each of their first, second and fourth years at the facility.
Patients at state psychiatric hospitals tend to have more complex conditions and serious conditions, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, that haven't responded to treatments in short-term care settings such as in psychiatric units of private acute-care hospitals, Wolf said.
Stays in those private hospitals tend to be limited to two weeks or less because of health insurance restrictions, she said. State institutions such as Packard don't need to deal with insurance restrictions, and so patients at state facilities have the luxury of potentially longer stays to ensure that the type of medicine and other treatments used are effective, Wolf said.
Seeing psychiatric patients get better in real time is satisfying, said Dr. Rupa Maitra, a psychiatry specialist at Alton Mental Health Center who spent part of her SIU psychiatry residency at Packard about 20 years ago.
"You're not fighting with insurance companies," she said. "You're actually making your decision with just one thing in mind – that is, the clinical condition of the patient and what will make them be successful once they are released. And that is very rewarding for any provider, any doctor."
Of the 150 patients at Packard, about 80% are "forensic" patients, which means they have had some involvement with the criminal-justice system. They are receiving treatment to restore their mental fitness for trial or have been found not guilty by reason of insanity.
The SIU residents and faculty members will be working only on a unit with non-forensic patients, Wolf said.
Dean Olsen is a senior staff writer at Illinois Times. He can be reached at dolsen@illinois, 217-836-1068 or x.com/DeanOlsenIT.
