Porter Starke Services is making another pitch that proceeds from the sale of the former county hospital be used toward services for the indigent, after the mental health agency posted a near year-end loss of more than $1 million on its psychiatric inpatient unit.

The inpatient unit shut down temporarily earlier this year, after St. Anthony Medical Center decided not to renew its contract to operate the unit. Porter Starke opted to keep the unit open on its own, but for five months was unable to collect on service charges as it waited for a Medicaid license application to be processed.

Most of the operating loss of more than $1 million occurred during that time period, and the unit’s financial health has since improved. However, Porter Starke says the unit still is operating at a loss and will need always need some outside support if it will ever get to the break-even point.

“The client funding isn’t going to et better any time soon,” said Porter Starke vice president of marketing and development Bob Franko.

Franko said Porter Starke wants to provide the full continuum of mental health services and believes that the inpatient unit is a critical need in the county. At the same time, though, it doesn’t want to drain other programs for the unit.

“It’s something we’re watching on a month-to-month basis,” he said, noting that the Porter Starke Board may at some point set a deadline for a decision to be made on the future of the unit.

Use of the hospital proceeds may not be the only option for assisting the inpatient unit, but Franko said Porter Starke believes the best option for the county overall is to use part of the hospital proceeds for services that provide indigent care.

The county is projected to have about $6 million a year available from the interest earned on the hospital proceeds principal. The Porter County Council and the Porter County Commissioners still must decide what to do with the interest earnings, and no timetable for that has been set yet. One proposal that appears to be supported by a number of the county officials is to use the interest earned for homestead credits, which would lower homeowner property taxes.

A press release issued by Porter Starke notes that during the four months that the inpatient unit was in its transition stage at the start of this year, the number of suicides jumped 247 percent. Porter Starke CEO David Lomaka indicated that a direct parallel between the suicide rate and the lack of an psychiatric unit cannot be made, but at the same time, no one would want to test the reliability of the numbers. “To do that, we would just be counting more preventable deaths,” he said.

Posted 12/20/2007