Two years ago, Bartlett Regional Hospital chief executive officer Chuck Bill created a new position, that of Chief Behavioral Health Officer.
It was in response to the fact that, as he said via email Friday, the hospital wasn’t “providing the expert leadership needed to provide great care” in the realms of mental and behavioral health. Issues of addiction and mental illness were particularly concerning.
The first hire for that position, Sally Anne Schneider, left that position Friday after about a year and a half. Both she and Bill feel that her time in town has produced positive results, and Schneider is particularly excited about the future of care in Juneau.
“That will be the sad part to me about leaving Juneau,” Schneider said Friday as movers packed up her office. “The talent and commitment here is tremendous.”
She’ll keep tabs on Juneau from afar, as she’ll be the CEO of LifeCare Behavioral Health Hospital in Pittsburgh. Bartlett, meanwhile, is embarking on a national search to fill her position.
There’s quite a bit that goes into that role, Schneider said, from seeking for ways to reduce wait times for service to getting local mental health services to join forces to exploring new approaches to addiction treatment.
Bartlett-owned Rainforest Recovery Center has instituted a new medically-assisted opioid treatment to further battle the rise of addiction in Juneau. Schneider was one of the driving forces in securing funding for that program, and Bill said the hospital will continue to devote resources to fighting addiction.
“This remains a focused work in progress,” Bill said via email Friday, “but we are vastly better having had the benefits of Sally’s knowledge and skills.”
Bill said it’s hard to quantify the progress, so his perception of improvement is more anecdotal than statistical. Schneider said that at Rainforest Recovery Center, wait times for services have dropped from 22 days to six days during the past year and a half.
One of the next steps in that progress is improving Rainforest Recovery Center’s facility. Schneider and colleagues wrote up a business plan for renovating the facility and adding an assessment center.
In the business plan, Schneider argued that the current Rainforest facility is “fragmented” and that the facility needs remodeling and a new roof. The assessment center would be a 3,700-square foot addition to the building that would include offices and a lobby and would act solely as a place where patients would come and have doctors figure out what services would be best for them.
Currently, there isn’t a streamlined system for assessing people and determining which service in town is best for them. This slows down the treatment process, Schneider said.
City Manager Rorie Watt agrees that the Rainforest facility needs improving, and he included the assessment center on his list of recommendations to the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly Finance Committee for how to spend its sales tax revenue.
“I’ve seen a need in the community for drug treatment,” Watt said Friday. “The Rainforest facility is old. We’ve supported Rainforest annually with some of the alcohol tax for their operations. It seems to be a community need.”
The Finance Committee has kept it on its list of possible services to fund with sales tax revenue. At its June 28 meeting, the Finance Committee also included the Rainforest expansion on a list submitted to Gov. Bill Walker to request federal funding.
For Schneider, the assessment center represents her vision for Juneau as a whole. There are plenty of services in town for treating mental health issues and addiction, but if they can be streamlined they can be much more effective, she said.
“I think the beauty is that this community has the skillset to wrap around,” Schneider said, “they just need a plan.”
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com.
