COMMUNITY BENEFITS

Introduction

McLean Hospital is a non-profit center for psychiatric and chemical dependency treatment, teaching and research founded in 1811. It provides a continuum of inpatient, residential, partial hospitalization, and outpatient care. McLean offers both biological and psychosocial treatment to children, adolescents, adults, and geriatric patients. U.S. News & World Report continuously ranks McLean first among psychiatric hospitals nationwide.

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 196 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:

During the Partners HealthCare and Channels 7/56 Health and Fitness Expo on June 23 and 24, 2007 in Boston, McLean hosted a large exhibit, at which thousands of attendees were able to obtain general information on mental health and McLean programs and services. In addition, 108 men and women took a short, confidential memory screening test resulting in a number of referrals to their primary care physicians. Sixty-five attendees took an abbreviated version of the McLean Motion and Attention Test (M-MAT™), which is designed to aid clinicians in evaluating individuals for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Approximately 1,000 people had the opportunity to learn about the important role that the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center (also known as the Brain Bank) plays in neurological and psychiatric research.
McLean celebrated the opening of its newest program in September 2007—the Adolescent DBT Program—an eight-bed residence, which places heavy emphasis on the utilization of dialectical behavior therapy as a therapeutic tool for adolescent girls and young women, ages 13 to 19, who are exhibiting self-endangering behaviors and emerging borderline personality traits.
The OCD Institute, the first residential treatment program in the country for individuals with treatment-resistant obsessive compulsive disorder, celebrated its tenth anniversary in the spring of 2007. It remains a valuable resource to patients around the world.
During Mental Illness Awareness Week in October 2007, McLean held several community events aimed at heightening public awareness of psychiatric disorders. These included depression screenings for adults 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 eighth annual alcohol screening in April 2007, which offers free and confidential screenings, education, and consultation for individuals and family members who are affected by alcohol use disorders.
Throughout 2007, McLean continued to provide clinical and prevention services within the Boston Public School System through the RALLY program (Responsive Advocacy for Life and Learning in Youth) at the Curley K-8 in Jamaica Plain. The program provides services to approximately 150 seventh and eighth grade students and their families who come from Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, Roxbury, West Roxbury, Roslindale, and Mattapan. The majority of children and families are Latino and Black. With a particular focus on resiliency building and early detection of mental health issues, RALLY "prevention practitioners" help students develop supportive relationships, provide academic assistance, refer students to services or enrichment opportunities in the community, and bridge communication between students, teachers, families, school staff, and other service providers.
RALLY staff has also provided training and consultation to school staff on a variety of issues related to supporting students and families with the social/emotional issues they are facing within a school context. RALLY has also been instrumental is facilitating a consortium that brings community providers together with school staff to bolster the partnership between the school and the community. Fifteen to 20 community providers are active members, and this year, students are also participating in the consortium. This network enables students and families to have greater access to opportunities, and is helping to create a stronger sense of collaboration between the school, families, and the larger community.
In April 2007, 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 fifth annual conference of PEAR, the Program in Education, Afterschool and Resiliency, a joint initiative of McLean Hospital and Harvard University. The April 2007 conference covered such topics as leadership, engaging children and youth through music, arts, and sports, violence prevention, and systems change. PEAR also offers quarterly web-based seminars between annual conferences.
Joseph Gold, MD, chief medical officer for McLean and clinical director of McLean's Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Services, oversees (and helped to establish) the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program (MCPAP) at North Shore Medical Center, 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.
Waverley Place, the hospital's community support program, continued with many activities that integrate people with mental illness into the community, such as running a stand in the Belmont Farmers' Market. Waverley's new computer laboratory and instructor help prepare members for competitive jobs in the community. As a training site for psychiatry, social work, occupational therapy, and peer specialists, Waverley Place educates new mental health professionals about non-stigmatizing psychiatric rehabilitation.
The Community Greenhouse Program, an offshoot of Waverley Place, offers 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, about 50 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 to train 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 FY2007, McLean provided approximately $600,000 in free care and $800,000 in uncollectible care, a total of $1.4 million worth of care for which there was no reimbursement to the hospital. More than $6 million worth of care was provided to Medicaid patients in FY2007. This care was inadequately reimbursed, for a total of $3.7 million, resulting in a loss of $2.3 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 2007 included:

Educating the Public

Together with the Multi-Service Eating Disorder Association, McLean participated in Eating Disorders Awareness Week in February 2007.
More than 250 state and city leaders, educators, advocates, public health officials, and parents gathered in the Great Hall of Flags at the Massachusetts State House in December 2007 to discuss the epidemic of drug use among America's youth. Richard Falzone, MD, a child psychiatrist in McLean's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Program, was among the expert panelists. The forum was sponsored by Partners HealthCare, the Boston Public Health Commission and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health Bureau of Substance Abuse Services.
The Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean Hospital provided more than 100 tours in 2007, with a total of almost a thousand participants. Guided tours of the department were granted to the general public, nursing students, Harvard Medical School students, McLean Hospital's psychiatric residents, teacher organizations, librarians, visiting scientists and speakers, prospective monetary donors, representatives of the press (TV, radio, magazine, and newspaper.), as well as the members of the McLean community itself.
In conjunction with mental health care providers in north central Massachusetts, McLean at Naukeag, the hospital's satellite substance abuse site located in Ashburnham, participated in a Recovery Education Fair held at Heywood Hospital. Speakers presented talks on recovery, treatment options, and substance abuse prevention. Program literature was available, as well as, opportunity for attendees to talk with service providers in a private setting.
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 2007, more than 150 people of all ages and backgrounds volunteered at the Center at 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 2007, "Psychiatry in 2007," co-sponsored by Harvard Medical School, drew attendees from around the US and seven other countries. In October 2007, more than 140 people attended a two-day conference, "Geriatric Psychiatry in 2007." Throughout 2007, 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. 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.
Timothy Wheelock, assistant director for Neuropathology at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, offers a full two-year course in Human Neuroanatomy to the staff of Dr. Scott Lukas' Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory, a group that studies drug and alcohol addiction.
McLean's Department of 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.

Educating Students

A new program, InS-PIRE (In Science-Partners in Research and Education), got under way at McLean in 2007. The overarching goal of the program is to close the gap between research and the community. More specifically, the goals of the program are two-fold. First, this collaborative effort between junior investigators at McLean and classroom science educators at McLean's Arlington School (for bright, young, behaviorally challenged students) aims to share current events in innovative research and scientific knowledge with the hopes of educating and inspiring students about how scientific discovery pertains to them, and to encourage critical thinking. Secondarily, junior research faculty will be provided with a unique opportunity to teach and interact with the students. One such discussion described the kinds of careers open to people who pursue degrees in psychology. This interactive presentation was complete with demonstrations about perception and memory, and was given by Christina Meade, PhD, a licensed psychologist pursuing brain imaging research in McLean's Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory.
Timothy Wheelock, Assistant Director for Neuropathology at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, hosted his annual field trip to his Neuropathology Laboratory for life- science seniors from Belmont and Arlington High Schools, where the students are shown a variety of preserved human brain specimens and microscopic images of the brain.
The Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center staff lent preserved human brain specimens to teaching hospitals and universities throughout the New England area. In addition, the Brain Bank provided macroscopic and microscopic images from the Brain Bank's Image Archive.
A group of McLean researchers continued with "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, 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.
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. He also presented a historical lecture to a Boston College class of graduate student nurses studying psychiatric mental health nursing.

Resource for the Media

In 2007, McLean Hospital was featured in more than 2,000 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, McLean experts appeared in every major media market, including Boston, New York, Washington, DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Outreach has also extended beyond national borders, with experts making appearances in Korea, Australia, India, and Canada.

Community Contribution

McLean continues to actively support the activities of the Town of Belmont's Land Management Committee through active membership in the Committee. The McLean Chief Operating Officer is also an active participant in the Watertown Belmont Chamber of Commerce.

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 work closely with the following community groups on a wide range of patient care and advocacy issues:

Alcoholics Anonymous
AlAnon
American Red Cross - The McLean Department of Human Resources held four blood drives in 2007 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 Sports 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 is 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 2007, the Friends supported such initiatives as the Priscilla Aikenhead Lecture, the purchase and wrapping of holiday gifts for all McLean inpatients and residential patients, and the funding of scholarships for two graduating students of McLean's Arlington School. The Friends also donated more than $8,000 to a number of hospital programs to enhance the life of patients through the purchase of DVDs, art work, tools, supplies, educational material, and other goods.
Health Law Advocates
Manic-Depressive and Depressive Association of Boston (housed at McLean)
Massachusetts Association of Behavioral Health Systems
Multi-Service Eating Disorder Association
Narcotics Anonymous
NarAnon
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill/Massachusetts - Members of the McLean community participated in the May 2007 mental illness awareness walk sponsored by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) of Massachusetts. Team McLean raised a little 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 and Adolescent Psychiatry
New England Personality Disorder Association
New England Society for Behavior Therapy
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.

Individual Community Contributions

Francesca Antognini, PhD, of McLean's Geriatric Psychiatry Program, performed several community outreach initiatives in 2007. On June 13, 2007, she presented a talk to the staff at Mitre Corporation in Bedford titled, "Recognition and Treatment of Depression in Older Adults." The talk was simulcast to other Mitre locations around the country. A number of attendees had older relatives suffering from depression and there were many questions asked and answered about treatment resources.

In May 2007, at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr., Antognini served as a presenter for a McLean Hospital course in geriatric mood disorders. Her presentation was titled, "Psychotherapy with Depressed Older Adults."
In October 2007, she participated in McLean's free conference on geriatric psychiatry, delivering a similar presentation on psychotherapy for older adults.

Ross J. Baldessarini, MD, Director of McLean's Psychopharmacology Program and the International Consortium for Bipolar Disorder Research, was recently selected to serve on the board of directors of the Newton-Wellesley-Weston Committee for Community Living, Inc., an organization that establishes and supervises group homes for handicapped adults. He and his wife Frances also are active volunteer-supporters of the Failure to Thrive Clinic for inner-city children at Boston Medical Center. Dr. Baldessarini remains very active in the teaching of psychopharmacology to colleagues in clinical practice regionally and nationally and serves as a volunteer mentor to junior investigators at several universities and medical centers in the US and abroad.

Francine Benes, MD, PhD, Director of the Structural and Molecular Neuroscience Laboratory and the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean, serves as a member of the board of directors for the Walden Pond Reservation, a state-owned and run facility.

Jeffrey Brown, PsyD, ABPP, and Beth Meister, EdD, both McLean clinical associates, provided psychological services for the Boston Marathon in April 2007.

Diane Davey, RN, MBA, Program Manager of the OCD Institute at McLean, serves on the National Obsessive Compulsive (OC) Foundation Board of Directors. The OC Foundation is a national organization dedicated to education, treatment and research for people with OCD and their families.

Louis Fernandes, Senior Dissectionist at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean, raised more than $1,200 for the Autism Tissue Program by running the 2007 Boston Marathon.

Brent Forester, MD, Director of the Mood Disorders Division, Geriatric Psychiatry Research Program, participated in a number of activities on behalf of the Alzheimer's Association. He spoke on a panel for a group of Massachusetts elder care attorneys. In May 2007, he and his colleagues from the Geriatric Psychiatry Program spoke at the annual conference of the Alzheimer's Association of Massachusetts on the treatment of behavioral disturbances in patients with dementia. On April 21, 2008, he and Lesley Adkison, MSN, RN, nurse director of the Geriatric Neuropsychiatry Unit, will be running in the Boston Marathon to raise money for the Alzheimer's Association.

Patricia Georgopoulos, Administrative Case Coordinator for the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean, collaborated with many consumer groups, such as the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and the Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's disease associations, to educate their members about the services that the Brain Bank offers.

Geriatric Psychiatry Program staff members, led by Clinical Director James Ellison, MD, conducted 108 memory screenings at the Partners HealthCare Channels 7/56 Health and Fitness Expo on June 21 and 22, 2007 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. The team screened 108 men and women, ages 21 to 87 with a mean age of 58. About three-fourths of those screened expressed concerns about their memory and a significant number had impairment that was, in most cases, mild. The team made a number of helpful referrals for individuals whose memories might be improved with medical follow-up for depression, thyroid disease, pituitary disease, or sleep disorders.
In addition, Geriatric Psychiatry staff members provided depression and dementia screenings for senior citizens in Arlington and Belmont, through each town's Council on Aging.

Joseph Gold, MD, chief medical officer and clinical director of McLean's Child and Adolescent Services, served as a consultant on a documentary film called, "Depression: True Stories." The documentary will be distributed to every middle school and high school in Boston, courtesy of Partners.

Michelle Gougeon, MSS, MSc, Executive Vice president and Chief Operating Officer, is a board member and chair of the program committee of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay. She is also a board member of the Massachusetts Association of Behavioral Health Systems and the Watertown Belmont Chamber of Commerce.

Nancy Hoines, MPH, Director of Marketing and Business Development, serves as an advisory board member of the Multi-Service Eating Disorder Association, whose mission is to prevent the spread of eating disorders through educational awareness and early detection.

James Hudson, MD, ScD, Director of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory and the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Program at McLean, serves on the Clinical and Scientific Advisory Council of the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). NEDA is the largest nonprofit organization dedicated to eating disorders in the country. It serves the needs of communities throughout the US by providing programs, products and services designed to prevent, treat and find a cure for eating disorders. Dr. Hudson is involved in the clinical and scientific leadership, and one month per year, in rotation with other national experts, he provides written responses to clinical questions regarding eating disorders from concerned individuals and their families seeking advice and guidance in an online forum.

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

Jaime Knudsen, Research Assistant in the Brain Imaging Center at McLean, volunteers for an organization called Youth Enrichment Services (YES) which teaches inner-city youth outdoor sports, such as skiing, hiking, and camping. The purpose of the program is to expose the youngsters to new experiences and diversify their interests. YES also teaches them about environmental issues, encourages them to become junior volunteers with the program, and operates a group that focuses on instilling confidence in young girls.

Joan Kovach, APRN, BC, Nurse Director for McLean SouthEast, and her colleagues educate nursing students from Massasoit Community College and Curry College. One program of interest is the RN to LPN evening program at the Massasoit Community College. The students in this program conduct their psychiatric clinical placement on the adult and adolescent units at MSE, a McLean satellite site in Brockton. Kovach continues to serve on the nursing advisory board at Curry College.

Kristen Lancaster, RN, Clinical Coordinator, McLean SouthEast Adolescent Acute Residential Treatment Program, helped organize a Salvation Army event titled the Neediest Families Fundraiser. One of her roles involved soliciting businesses in the New Bedford area for raffle items. The 2007 event was the second consecutive year in which $10,000 was raised for the Neediest Families Fund.

David Lagasse, Senior Vice President for Fiscal Affairs, volunteers as a money manager for BayPath Elder services. The Money Management Program is a statewide program administered locally by BayPath Elder Services, Inc. since 1991. The Money Management Program helps elders 60 and over with their day-to-day finances.

Deborah Levy, PhD, Director of the Psychology Research Laboratory, serves on the Board of Advocates at Bay Cove Human Services in Boston.

Eliza Menninger, MD, Psychiatrist in Charge of the Behavioral Health Partial Hospital Program at McLean, coordinated the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine Day, teaching clinical aspects of psychiatry for high school students at McLean. This involved overseeing the teaching of basic principles of psychiatry and coordinating clinical interviews and meetings with specialists in psychiatry for more than 40 high school students.

Beth Murphy, MD, PhD, Psychiatrist in Charge of McLean's Clinical Evaluation Center, volunteers on the board of advisors for Families for Depression Awareness, a local non-profit organization dedicated to helping families recognize and cope with depressive disorders.

Gil G. Noam, Dipl. Psych, EdD, director of McLean's Developmental Psychology and Psychopathology Program, and his staff provided training in mental health and behavior management to teachers and after-school professionals in multiple Boston Public Schools throughout 2007.

Jacqueline Olds, PhD, a McLean Clinical Associate, served as a member of a Cambridge Conservation Commission study group.

William Pollack, PhD, Director of the Centers for Men and Young Men at McLean, engaged in numerous educational and outreach activities to international communities, concerning issues affecting boys' healthy development; parenting issues for boys and young men; men's mental health; the epidemic of male violence and suicide; and his research on new "male-markers" for depression and "male-friendly" models of intervention.

In addition, he served as a consultant to the US Secret Service and the US Department of Education on school violence and creating safe climates, and was a member of First Lady Laura's Bush's group on Helping America's Youth.

Some of Dr. Pollack's global speaking engagements included a talk sponsored by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse to help practitioners better understand outreach to young males suffering from substance abuse and mental health; a keynote address before the Secretary General of UNESCO during the International Conference on Fairness in Education in the 21st Century in Paris, France; and a speech during an international health conference, the Conference of The America's, on boys and schools in Montreal, Canada.

Jeffrey D. Rediger, MD, MDiv, Medical Director, McLean SouthEast, has been assisting in the development of programs for indigent and economically disadvantaged individuals with substance abuse problems in Puerto Rico. He recently presented the key-note address for residential and outpatient mental health treatment programs opening in Caguas, Puerto Rico.

Denise Egan Stack, a staff member at the OCD Institute at McLean, serves as the President of the Greater Boston affiliate of the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation, which sponsors a website highlighting education and treatment provider information, information on support groups located in Massachusetts, and a monthly lecture series held at McLean..

George Tejada, MS, Assistant Director of Tissue Processing at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean, represented the Brain Bank at the annual convention of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in San Diego in June 2007, a meeting that draws more than 2,000 people each year.

Gail Tsimprea, PhD, Chief Quality and Risk Management Officer at McLean, continues to serve as McLean's representative to the U.S. News & World Report "America's Best Hospitals" Advisory Group. In addition, she is involved in other community health-related initiatives: She served as the focus group leader for the Harvard University Health Services Initiative on International Students and Health Care, in which she met with Harvard students from Thailand, Ghana, Pakistan, Argentina, Japan, Hungary, Indonesia and India. In a separate initiative, Dr. Tsimprea was asked to contribute a two-part article on behalf of McLean Hospital's suicide risk assessment tool in the Board of Registration in Medicine's quality publication: "FIRST, Do No Harm."

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.

Timothy Wheelock, Assistant Director of Neuropathology at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean, presented a lecture titled, "A 60-Minute Introduction to Human Neuroanatomy," to members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, a continuing education program for seniors at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. He also gave the same lecture to the Plymouth Council on Aging senior center.

In addition, Wheelock and his colleague Louis Fernandes created the exhibit for and represented the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at the Partners HealthCare and Channels 7/56 Health and Fitness Expo at the Hynes Convention Center in June 2007. The booth drew almost a thousand people to its exhibits.

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 FY2007 Community Commitment
(in $ Millions)
Compiled According to a Broader Definition

Net Uncompensated Care			0.6
Bad Debt (at Cost)			0.8
Medicaid Loss (at Cost)			2.3
Medicare Loss (at Cost)			0.2
Unreimbursed Expenses for Graduate Medical Education			0.1
Linkage/In Lieu/Tax Payments			0.4
Total Broader Definition			4.4

If McLean's societal contribution is compared to total patient care-related expenses, the hospital's contribution to the community represented nearly six percent of expenses in FY2007.

Contact Information

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

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