Written by Tanya Terry, featured photo provided courtesy of Genesee Health System
Earlier this summer, Genesee Health System (GHS) announced the former Baker College Undergraduate Building and Library-Flint campus would become the new GHS Main Campus. This new campus will house all staff and services currently at 420 West Fifth Avenue.
GHS hosted a community talk on Wednesday, August 23 at Flint Central Church of the Nazarene, located at 1261 Bristol Rd. The Courier was there to find out how the move will affect those struggling with mental issues, their loved ones and the rest of the Flint community.
“I think it’s important because it makes our services more accessible to everybody,” said Dan Russell, CEO of GHS.
Russell added: “I think it’s just better for the health of the community. Even if you yourself don’t personally struggle with mental health, having a better mental health in the community helps everybody. It makes the community a better place, more productive. It’s safer, and it just improves the overall well-being of the community.”
Russell said GHS is moving because it’s a great facility and the current facility needs major renovations.
He also said the individual GHS bought the new campus from rehabs buildings and, over time, will turn the old building into an asset that will again serve the Flint community.
The Mental Health Millage was passed in May of 2021. Russell said GHS received the money in 2022. The millage was for .94 mills and generates about $9.6 million.
“We have just started implementing programs that normally we can’t offer because of our restricted funding. So, we’re doing a lot of training with the police force. We’re doing a lot of ride-alongs. We’re doing a co-response, where we have a social worker with a police officer so that they can address cases that are really more mental health-related than they are criminal. We’re doing almost 24/7 crisis services, which were not available before. We’re doing a couple programs with the schools. We have a program called U-Cares, which is a crisis service specifically for the schools. (U-Care is a GHS staffed team consisting of licensed mental health professionals who will provide crisis intervention, crisis screenings, referral and coordination of care, and brief targeted therapy.) We are just starting to roll out a peer-to-peer suicide prevention program in all the schools in the county. We’re also able to provide services for a population that we’ve not been able to before-individuals that have mental health challenges, but they don’t quite meet the Medicaid necessity. So, individuals struggling with anxiety or depression or relationships or PTSD that didn’t meet the medical necessity, we can now serve those. “
In addition to providing mental health services, GHS is one of the few community health centers that does have a federally qualified health center. Across the street from the main building on the main campus, the medical center does” pretty much what a family physician would do,” according to Russell.
In the new children’s building, children will also be able to receive mental health and primary care in the same setting.
Russell talked about how GHS would be classified as a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC), which was started by legislation started in Michigan by Senator Debbie Stabenow.
“It changes the way we get funded. So, we’re not tied to a specific set of diagnoses. So, anybody who has a mental health issue, we will be able to serve.”
Russell also talked to attendees about how now police don’t just have the options of taking those struggling with mental health matters to jail or to the hospital. Instead, there is a mental health Urgent Care Center, which will move from 5th Avenue to the new campus. GHS is also doing crisis intervention training with police, through which police receive 40 hours of training instead of the few hours they received before.
Flint Township Resident Quayeria Rushing pointed out the area where the main campus is now deals with a lot of lack of access already, and GHS has been a pinnacle there. She wanted to know why the decision to move was made.
Russell told her GHS can take care of the access issue through the use of a transportation company or working with MTA. He said there would not be an issue with getting people to the new location.
Rushing stated: “I was satisfied with knowing it was thought about and yet they were still going to accommodate the transportation because I know that is a big barrier for some people.”
