CEO Asks Community to Write Letters Supporting Bringing Behavioral Health to Mat-Su Regional
7/31/2017
Dear Fellow Mat-Su Resident,
I am asking for your support to bring much needed inpatient behavioral health services to our hospital
and the Mat-Su Borough.
We are excited that on June 27, we submitted an application for a certificate of need to the State of
Alaska to add 36 inpatient behavioral health beds for adult substance abuse and mental health services
in the Mat-Su Borough.
Currently, these services are non-existent in the Borough. In light of the alarming opioid epidemic and
growing instances of mental health crises, being forced to rely on the local emergency department as a
substitute for behavioral health care is no longer an option.
To give you an idea of the depth of the problem, we are on track to require over 1,100 behavioral health
assessments in 2017 for patients who present to the emergency department in crisis for a substance
abuse or mental health issue. Only 349 of these assessments were required just three years ago.
Without having inpatient behavioral health beds available onsite or nearby, the emergency department
was forced to handle 2 or more patients in crisis from mental health or addiction issues at the same time
on 234 occasions in 2016. To put this in perspective, the emergency department had to face this
situation just 5 times in 2012.
We need your support. Please consider sending or emailing a letter to the Certificate of Need Program
at the State of Alaska to show your support for these critically needed services in the Mat-Su Borough.
For your convenience, I have included a sample letter that you can use as a guide or paste into an
email. Please submit your email by Tuesday, Aug. 22 at 4:30 p.m. to:
Alexandria Hicks, Certificate of Need Coordinator
Department of Health and Social Services, Office of Rate Review
3601 C Street, Suite 978
Anchorage, AK 99503
Phone: (907) 754-3428; Fax: (907) 334-2220
Email: Alexandria.Hicks@alaska.gov
Thank you again for considering supporting our project. If you have any questions, feel free to contact
Jared Kosin, director of business development for the hospital at (907) 861-6518 or j.kosin@msrmc.com.
Sincerely,
Dave Wallace
CEO
Download sample letter here.
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