Juneau hospital closes emergency department less than a year after opening

A program designed to provide immediate care to adolescents in crisis at Juneau Municipal Hospital closed earlier this month after opening eight months ago.

Erin Hardin, spokeswoman for Bartlett Regional Hospital, said in an interview that the closure is due to a lack of funding and staffing.

“There is no special funding available and we do not have enough staff to keep the unit open,” she said. “So with the knowledge of both of those factors, the decision was made to close that particular program.”

This comes as the hospital faces a major budget crisis. The board is asking for financial help for a handful of services it says are draining money. The crisis stabilization service was one of those programs, and it was expected to lose $1.2 million next year.

The hospital only began offering the service in December of last year, after the new Aurora Behavioral Health Center was completed. It was built specifically to house the program and the hospital’s psychiatric services program.

When it opened, the Crisis Stabilization Unit was hailed as a groundbreaking service to help youth in Juneau and throughout Southeast Alaska get the mental health and substance abuse care they need.

According to state data, suicide was the leading cause of death for Alaska Native youth ages 10 to 19 and for all youth ages 10 to 14 in 2020. It was the second leading cause of death for Alaska Natives ages 15 to 34 that year.

Aaron Surma, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Juneau, said the demand for crisis services in Juneau is high and the closure will be devastating for those who need them most.

“People aren’t getting what they need — and that has all sorts of negative consequences. And I think you can easily draw parallels to other tragedies that have happened in our community,” he said. “So people are going to have it even harder, and it’s very difficult to live in crisis and be successful.”

According to Surma, with the lack of adequate crisis care in Juneau, it is vital that people learn how to support each other’s mental health.

“I want and hope that people feel more comfortable supporting each other’s mental health because I think individuals can be more reliable than systems and services,” he said.

Hardin said people in crisis can still get care at Bartlett. But they will get it from the hospital’s emergency department instead of the crisis center. She said the hospital’s board of directors continues to look for other more financially sustainable ways to provide crisis care in the future.

The Aurora building will remain open and house outpatient psychiatric services. Hardin said the portion of the building that housed the crisis program will likely be repurposed for other hospital programs.