Mental health staff ride out storm alongside patients

The Oceans’ Kentwood and Hammond facilities sustained only minor damages, a hospital official said.

“We knew that after a storm, with everything going on, people still need access to mental health treatment,” said Allen McCartney, hospital administrator. “The ER still needed a place to send them, so it was our plan to stay and be open and try to serve the community as we expected a lot of the facilities down south to close because as hard as were hit, they were hit harder.”

Oceans Hammond provides inpatient and outpatient mental health services for adult and geriatric patients while Oceans Kentwood provides services to adolescents ages 10 to 17 years old. The Kentwood facility also offers an intensive outpatient program for adults ages 18 and older.

Staff commended

Despite damages to their own homes, like many affected in the area, multiple employees came to work and cared for patients first before tending to their own homes second.

At the time of the storm, all 32 beds at the Hammond facility were filled, and only one of the 20 beds at the Kentwood facility was open. Administrators divided between the two locations and sheltered in place alongside nurses and techs. Between both sites, around 35 to 40 employees, including administration and floor staff, sheltered in place.

“It was nice to see the staff coming in and caring for the patients even though many of them had major issues with their homes, some with trees, some with flooding, so they really stepped up at a time when we really needed them, when the patients really needed them,” McCartney said.

As interstates and roads opened, staff came to work and relieved those employees who sheltered in place with the residents for the night of the storm. A few employees remained for a few days because they could not access their homes.

“I was just grateful for the staff that came in and cared for the patients and gave us the ability to be able to help the patients and the other providers in the areas that needed our assistance,” McCartney said.

Generators were on standby ahead of the storm and were used to control the patient part of the buildings throughout the two weeks the facility was without power. After a couple of days of working in the warmth, staff were able to hook up the administration offices to the generators. The patient areas were totally normal, he said.

He believes the one positive is that the two locations did not have any staff out with COVID when the hurricane hit.

Although numbers for COVID are still high, if rates were still as high as they were a month prior, when every facility had staff out, they might not have had the staff available during the storm, he said.

Relief for ER

There were a lot of placement needs as the ER was inundated with medical emergencies on top of normal mental health needs, he said.

McCartney explained that the first day or two after the hurricane was slower as the hospital was full and it was hard to get people back home. Once patients were able to be safely discharged and staff ensured that they were able to get their medicines from the pharmacies, Oceans hospital started being able to accept more patients, hoping to help out the local Emergency Rooms, as well as patients themselves who were depressed and had not had their medicines for a few days and were wanting direct referrals.

Medicine compliance is huge with mental health, and not having stable access to medicine can often exacerbate problems and cause people to seek out services, he said.

Since the hurricane, Oceans has enrolled new patients in counseling services and there was some uptick in admissions in the outpatient program, he said.

Many facilities in south Louisiana had to close because of the hurricane, meaning many patients needed placements from emergency rooms.

Group counseling at Oceans was closed the first few days after Ida. When it re-opened, patients who had not evacuated, around 15 on the first day, were able to get out of their environments and get the counseling they needed while also providing a bit of a reprieve from their hot homes for those who remained without power, he said.

Oceans is one of only two in-patient behavioral health hospitals in Hammond, both of which were opened within the past two years. Oceans Hammond opened in January of 2020, off Club Deluxe Road, and Universal Health Behavioral Hammond opened in April 2021 on South Oak Street.