COMMUNITY BENEFITS

Introduction

McLean Hospital is a non-profit center for psychiatric and chemical dependency treatment, teaching and research founded in 1811. The hospital maintains the largest research program of any private psychiatric hospital in the world and is consistently ranked the nation's top freestanding psychiatric hospital by U.S. News & World Report.

Mission Statement

The largest psychiatric clinical care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School, McLean is committed to:

Providing a full range of high-quality, cost-effective services to individuals of all backgrounds, their families and the community.
Supporting basic and clinical research into the causes, treatments and prevention of mental illness.
Training future generations of mental health professionals.

For more than 195 years, McLean has taken very seriously its responsibility to provide programs and services that improve the health of the community. Even during today's great financial challenges in health care, McLean remains true to that fundamental mission.

Improving Community Health through Innovative Programs

Improving community health is a natural extension of McLean's tripartite mission of clinical care, research and teaching, and its long-standing commitment to those with mental illness. Following are some examples of how McLean is continuously working to serve the community in innovative ways that have a favorable impact on the daily lives of community residents.

McLean celebrated the opening of its newest program in July 2006-The McLean Center at Fernside in Princeton, Mass., a residential treatment program for individuals whose substance use disorders are complicated by psychiatric illness. The program, located 50 miles west of McLean's Belmont campus, can accommodate up to 10 patients, with an average stay per patient of 30 days or longer.
Joseph Gold, MD, clinical director of McLean's Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Services, helped implement and now oversees the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program (MCPAP) at North Shore Medical Center, the MGH and McLean SouthEast in Brockton. MCPAP provides enrolled pediatricians telephone access-within 30 minutes-to a child psychiatrist, social worker or care coordinator so they can get questions answered quickly. Staff at these hospitals enrolled in MCPAP also see patients in person and refer them for ongoing care.
Under its Therapeutic Support Program, McLean continued to provide assistance to Brockton public school students who have psychiatric and other emotional challenges that are jeopardizing their capacity to learn. The program helps students and their families to stay together and to avoid having the child/adolescent sent away to a residential school.
Waverley Place, the hospital's community support program, marked its fifth anniversary in November 2006 with a gala open house celebration. The community of members and peer and professional staff that comprise Waverley Place continue to work together to provide resources, skills training and social support to help individuals with mental illness to thrive in the community.
The Community Greenhouse Program, an offshoot of Waverley Place, continued to offer a productive venue for mental health consumers to learn work skills in a therapeutic greenhouse environment located at the University of Massachusetts Waltham Field Station.
Under the "Cole to Teen Education Project," an initiative of the Jonathan O. Cole, MD, Mental Health Consumer Resource Center, a group of 35 adult "mentors," many of whom are McLean employees, team up with teen inpatients to help them build healthy interpersonal relationships that will carry them through their hospitalization back into the community. In addition to individual mentoring, the program sponsors a number of group activities throughout the year, including weekly lunches held in the hospital cafeteria, holiday parties and birthday celebrations.
McLean and the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health continued their efforts training state and local police officers in southeastern Massachusetts on how to manage mentally ill individuals in their custody.
McLean clinicians continued to provide emergency psychiatric services and inpatient psychiatric consultations to patients at Winchester Hospital and Jordan Hospital in Plymouth.

Caring for the Uninsured and Underinsured

To the extent feasible, McLean Hospital is committed to providing access to quality care for all, regardless of a person's ability to pay. In FY2006, McLean provided approximately $900,000 in free care and $800.000 in uncollectible care, a total of $1.7 million worth of care for which there was no reimbursement to the hospital. More than $5.8 million worth of care was provided to Medicaid patients in FY2006. This care was inadequately reimbursed, resulting in a loss of $1.5 million.

McLean staff members work actively with uninsured patients and their families, helping them through the application process to receive public benefits to which they are entitled, such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Strengthening Health through Education

Raising public awareness of psychiatric illness and training future generations of mental health providers are key to McLean's mission. Educational forums for the community in 2006 included:

Educating the public

During Mental Illness Awareness Week in October 2006, McLean held several community events aimed at heightening public awareness of psychiatric disorders. These included depression screenings for adults, a lecture on sexual behavior problems in children and participation in the Alzheimer's Association Memory Walk. Walkers from McLean raised more than $3,000 for the Alzheimer's Association. McLean also served as a corporate sponsor of the event.
The Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Program held its seventh annual alcohol screening, which offers free and confidential screenings, education and consultation for individuals and family members who are affected by alcohol use disorders.
Through its Speakers Bureau, McLean provided a dozen speakers on a variety of mental health-related topics free of charge to various organizations, community groups, schools and mental health centers throughout Massachusetts.
The Jonathan O. Cole MD Mental Health Consumer Resource Center at McLean Hospital offers a number of invaluable resources free to mental health consumers and their families, including education, social skills and community building, advocacy and volunteer opportunities. The Center actively collaborates with other organizations of similar mission to expand the scope of its operations in the mental health consumer community. Its relationship with Resource Partnership continues to help people with psychiatric illness find employment. During 2006, more than 140 people of all ages and backgrounds volunteered at the Center and McLean in a variety of hospital programs and services.

Educating providers

McLean's continuing education programs attracted broader audiences. A three-day conference in June 2006, "Psychiatry in 2006," co-sponsored by Harvard Medical School, drew the largest attendance (260) to date for this annual event. In October 2006, a two-day conference, "Geriatric Psychiatry in 2006," was attended by more than 270 people. Throughout 2006, the continuing education department, in conjunction with McLean's Psychopharmacology Service, continued to sponsor Grand Rounds, which serves the educational needs of McLean clinical staff and features local experts as well as presenters from around the world. And the department continued to work with a variety of outside organizations to offer continuing education opportunities. These organizations included Harvard University Health Services, Massachusetts General Hospital, South Shore Medical Health Services and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.
McLean, along with the Mexican Psychiatric Association, hosted a two-day educational workshop in April 2006 for 425 Mexican psychiatrists in Walocha, approximately 260 miles south of Mexico City. Presenting faculty from McLean included Philip Levendusky, PhD, who spoke about treatment compliance; James Ellison, MD, who spoke about advances in the treatment of adult mood disorders, Thomas Wiegel, MD, who spoke about mood and anxiety disorders in adolescents and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; David Stember, PhD, who spoke about anger management; and Edmund Neuhaus, PhD, who spoke about management of borderline personality disorder.
A broad coalition of educators, after-school providers, juvenile justice professionals and mental health workers explored ways to collaborate more effectively around the needs of Boston's young people during the fourth annual conference of PEAR, the Program in Education, Afterschool and Resiliency, a joint initiative of McLean Hospital and Harvard University. The April 2006 conference covered such topics as connecting with youth exposed to trauma and violence; developing ambitious strategies to change public education; financing and creating public-private partnerships for after-school programs; tackling obesity and physical activity; and bridging the disparate worlds of mental health and education.
More than 250 professionals attended a conference for special education administrators in March 2006 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. Presenting faculty from McLean included Gil Noam, EdD, PhD, Joseph Gold, MD, and Roya Ostovar, PhD.
McLean's Marketing and Business Development continued its free conference series on long-term mental health issues in the elderly. The series was designed to help long-term care providers optimize health and independence in their elderly patients, as well as to equip providers with a better understanding of interventions that work.
McLean researchers Barak Caine, PhD, John Halpern, MD, Scott Lukas, PhD, and Perry Renshaw, MD, PhD, presented lectures during a daylong seminar in April 2006 on current trends in drug abuse research, sponsored by the Center for Drug Discovery at Northeastern University in Boston.

Educating students

A group of McLean researchers developed and launched "Get Psyched About Science," an educational program for Boston middle school students who have an interest in neuroscience. Through a series of Saturday morning workshops, experiments, field trips and discussions, students at the Citizen Schools in Dorchester, Mass., saw firsthand how the brain operates and how drugs of abuse affect it. The goal of the program is to nurture young people's interest in science, to enhance critical thinking skills and to address other important societal issues, such as a lack of mentors for young people, scientific literacy and drug abuse.
In March 2006, McLean hosted 10 high school students from Lexington Christian Academy who are considering careers in nursing. In 2006, McLean also provided student nurse clinical placements for the schools of nursing at Northeastern University, Boston College, the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and Boston, the MGH Institute of Health Professions, Curry College and Regis College.
Undergraduates from Colgate University served as summer volunteers at several of McLean's child and adolescent programs, including in Camp New Connections (McLean's summer day camp for students with Asperger's disorder), Pathways Academy and at the McLean-Franciscan inpatient unit. These internship experiences help the students determine whether they want to pursue careers in child mental health care and/or education.
McLean archivist Terry Bragg, also director of Professional Staff Affairs, presented his annual talk to Brandeis University seniors on the history of McLean and issues facing the mental health system today.

Educating the media

In 2006, McLean Hospital was placed in more than 1,500 media outlets, including print, television, radio and online services. McLean continues to be a go-to resource for members of the media who need expert opinion on psychiatry-related questions. Last year, our experts appeared in every major media market, including Boston, New York, Washington< DC, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Our outreach has also extended beyond our national borders, with experts making appearances in Australian, Indian, Canadian and British media.

Community Contribution

McLean continues to actively support the activities of the Town of Belmont's Land Management Committee through active membership in the Committee and through a recent contribution to the open space owned by the Town of Belmont.

McLean agreed to demolish the farmhouse at 247 Mill St., Belmont, as part of the hospital's participation in the enhancement of the open space area. This demolition project, at a cost of $25,000, was a substantial contribution to the open space now owned by the Town of Belmont.

Community Participation

As a specialty hospital serving patients with psychiatric illnesses, McLean and its community are not defined by geographical location. Instead, patients - locally, nationally and internationally - and the various organizations to which they belong, form the communities McLean serves. McLean staff works closely with the following community groups on a wide range of patient care and advocacy issues:

Alcoholics Anonymous
AlAnon
American Red Cross-McLean held four blood drives in 2006 in support of the American Red Cross.
Boston Marathon-Members of McLean's clinical staff volunteered their time as members of the Boston Marathon Medical Team. Arthur Siegel, MD, chief of internal medicine, is the medical team leader for exercise-associated hyponatremia. As members of the Sport Psychology Services on the Marathon Medical Team, Jeffrey Brown, PsyD, ABPP, and Beth Meister, EdD, both McLean clinical associates, provided consultation, assessment, education and intervention to athletes who utilized medical services on race day.
Central Massachusetts Substance Abuse Providers Association
Friends of McLean Hospital-This hospital committee of volunteers are involved in supporting projects that directly benefit patients, fighting the stigma of mental illness and educating the larger community about mental illness and mental health. In 2006, the Friends supported such initiatives as the Priscilla Aikenhead Lecture; the purchase and wrapping of holiday gifts for all McLean inpatients; scholarships for two graduating seniors at McLean's Arlington School and Belmont High School; and the Fall Fling, a reunion for current and former residents and staff of McLean's adolescent acute residential treatment program. The Friends also donated $3,625 in artwork, software, audiovisual tapes, tools, supplies and other goods and materials to a number of patient-care programs.
Health Law Advocates
Manic-Depressive and Depressive Association of Boston (housed at McLean)
Massachusetts Eating Disorder Association
Narcotics Anonymous
NarAnon
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill/Massachusetts-Forty Members of the McLean community participated in the May 2006 mental illness awareness walk sponsored by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) of Massachusetts. Team McLean raised more than $2,000 for NAMI's "Mind of America" campaign and it also served as a corporate sponsor of the three-mile walk.
New England Council of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
New England Personality Disorder Association
New England Society for Behavior Therapy
New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation
North Central Dual Diagnosis Task Force
Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders Support Network
Plymouth Area Mental Health Alliance Committee Riverside Community Care
SMART (Self Management and Recovery Training)
South Shore Mental Health
TriCity Mental Health and Retardation Center

McLean regularly opens its doors to a number of these support and educational groups throughout the year, providing them with free meeting space. Information on these groups, including the times and locations at McLean where they meet, is posted on the hospital's web site.

In the Community

Alec Bodkin, MD, has been traveling the country educating physicians about the need for and the use of MAO inhibitors, in addition to giving presentations about topics ranging from incompetence and incapacity in elderly patients to identification and treatment of depression in cancer patients.

Hilary Connery, MD, PhD, psychiatrist in charge of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Program's residential and partial hospital programs, served as a physician mentor for the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine, a program introducing high achieving high school students to careers in medicine. Connery was also invited to be a discussant on addiction psychiatry for a community review of the Steven Soderbergh movie, Traffic, at the Revival House Theatre in Westerly, RI.

Brent Forester, MD, medical director of McLean's Geriatric Neuropsychiatry Unit, raised more than $5,000 for Alzheimer's disease research and education by running the 2006 Boston Marathon.

Joseph Gold, MD, clinical director of McLean's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, was honored by the Massachusetts Administrators for Special Education for his exemplary leadership in promoting and advancing the discourse in education, services and resources for the emotional and mental health needs of the state's students.

John Harrington, MD, an internal medicine consultant for McLean at Naukeag, and Vickie Weber, RN a staff nurse for McLean at Naukeag, traveled to Haiti as part of "Forward in Health," where they offered free medical care for children, including general primary care, HIV care and tuberculosis care, to approximately 140 patients a day.

Nancy Hoines, MPH, participates with other providers, mental health advocates and legislators in a statewide Eating Disorder Task Force, an initiative of the Mental Health Parity Project. The task force is seeking designation of eating disorders as "biologically-based" illnesses fully covered by the Mental Health Parity Law.

Sally Jenks, director of Managed Care Services for McLean, is a member of the community board and the foundation board of the Whittier Street Health Center in Roxbury, Mass. She is also active in the Cambridge, Mass., organization, Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic.

Joan Kovach, APRN, BC, nurse director for McLean SouthEast, has joined the nursing advisory board at Curry College. The board reviews the realities of nursing and health care with particular focus on how the nursing program can improve the education of its students. Kovach is also a member of the faculty at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, Mass.

Roberto Olivardia, PhD, assistant psychologist for McLean, served as the clinical expert for a 20-minute DVD, "Steroids True Stories: Hosted by Curt Schilling," which discusses the dangers of steroid use, as well as healthy alternatives that help build muscle and strength. During the film, Olivardia answers frequently asked questions about anabolic steroids. At an advanced screening of the DVD in May 2006, Olivardia participated in a panel discussion that included June Stansburg of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and Garin Veris, director of the Department of Recreation for Boston and a former New England Patriot.

Roger Weiss, MD, clinical director of McLean's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Program, serves as a vice president on the board of the Greater Boston Council on Alcoholism (GBCA). The GBCA provides financial support to non-profit organizations to institute innovative programs for children, adults and families that diminish the effects of alcoholism and other addictions.

Gail Tsimprea, PhD, director of Clinical Quality Assurance and Risk Management, was selected as McLean's representative to the U.S. News & World Report "America's Best Hospitals" Advisory Group. She and administrative and clinical leaders from a cross section of respected U.S. medical centers and professional medial organizations are working with magazine editors to improve the methodology in which it ranks the nation's hospitals.

Measuring the Commitment

One way to measure McLean's commitment to the community is by the amount of revenue foregone by the hospital as it provides care and training that is unreimbursed.

Components of FY2006 Community Commitment
(in $ Millions)
Compiled According to a Broader Definition

Net Uncompensated Care			0.9
Bad Debt (at Cost)			0.8
Medicaid Loss (at Cost)			1.5
Unreimbursed Expenses for Graduate Medical Education			0.8
Linkage/In Lieu/Tax Payments			0.5
Total Broader Definition			4.5

If McLean's societal contribution is compared to total patient care-related expenses, the hospital's contribution to the community represented more than six percent of expenses in FY2006.

Contact Information

For questions about this report, or for more information about McLean Hospital's community benefit activities, please contact:

Cynthia Lepore
Director, Public Affairs
McLean Hospital
115 Mill Street
Belmont, MA 02478
(617) 855-2110
Email: leporec@mclean.harvard.edu

9/2007