MINNEAPOLIS, January 8, 2008—The Twin Cities business journal Finance & Commerce ran an article last week about the Woodbury psychiatric hospital proposed by North Dakota-based Prairie St. John’s. The article extensively quoted Roger Kathol, M.D., a member of the MMA board of trustees.

Kathol said there’s a “huge backlog” of patients with psychiatric illnesses in emergency rooms throughout the state. At any given time, as many as 30 patients may be waiting for psychiatric care in an emergency room.

Many of those patients wouldn’t be admitted to a standalone facility like the one Prairie St. John’s is proposing, Kathol said, because government programs like Medicaid won’t pay for patients admitted to standalone facilities.

“They don’t have an emergency room, so they don’t have to take sick patients and they don’t have to take Medicaid patients,” Kathol told the newspaper. “They are bringing beds to Minnesota; we definitely need beds. But they are not bringing the type of beds that are going to alleviate the bed shortage we are experiencing.”

Kathol said Prairie St. John’s would be “siphoning off the paying patients, leaving [other hospitals] with a higher percentage of low-paying or non-paying patients.”

Prairie-St. John's envisions a three-story specialty psychiatric hospital on a 20-acre site near the Woodwinds Health Campus on Woodwinds Drive. Initial construction would create space for 96 beds, with another 48 beds to be added in a second phase.

The Minnesota Department of Health has scheduleda public meeting January 22 to gather input from citizens on the need for a proposed specialty psychiatric hospital in Woodbury.

The meeting will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Woodbury Central Park Indoor Amphitheater, 8595 Central Park Place, Woodbury.

A copy of the application from Prairie St. John’s and additional information on the public interest review process are available on the department’s Web site at www.health.state.mn.us/divs/hpsc/hep/moratorium/index.html.