University of Washington closing dept of psychiatry?

[Daxtrill]

Read this article online this morning. Any word from residents or those involved in the program? Would be a major blow.

I cannot post the article link because I just created this SDN account today, but it can be found at the Daily UW student newspaper, under the most popular articles section. It was the front page of yesterday’s paper. If the next poster wouldn’t mind posting the link that would be helpful.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[doggums]

.

 

[SmallBird]

Its not just a problem there; the new ligature risk standards are insanely expensive to implement, and make no sense anyway - unless the plan is for patients to live in these extremely safe spaces, an artificially risk free environment for 3 to 5 days probably undermines self-efficacy more than anything else.

 

[Amygdarya]

It's not the Department of Psychiatry that they're considering closing but the inpatient psychiatric unit. Big difference. Huge. Losing psychiatric beds sucks in the current state of severe psych beds shortage but not as shocking as closing the whole depart would be.

 

[WingedOx]

It's a pretty small unit from what I've read as well, so I'm assuming that UW residents are getting a sizable chunk of their inpatient training at other sites. Plenty of good residencies don't have their own unit like Loyola or UofC here locally, but it's not an ideal setup.

 

[Amygdarya]

It's a pretty small unit from what I've read as well, so I'm assuming that UW residents are getting a sizable chunk of their inpatient training at other sites. Plenty of good residencies don't have their own unit like Loyola or UofC here locally, but it's not an ideal setup.

Harborview (public hospital) is a major training site for UW psychiatry residency, and they have a VA as well. From what I understood during my interview day, Seven North is nice for the diversity of training sites (which UW has plenty of) but is not really crucial in the big scheme of things (which would be Harborview).

So UW psychiatry residency will be largely fine. The one thing I would worry about though is the institutional attitude toward psychiatry and the resulting allocation of resources etc. to the psychiatry department and the residency.

 

[wolfvgang22]

From what I have heard and seen is that they are considering applying these standards to outpatient clinics as well, which is ridiculous. I would link the proposals from CMS but I'm away from my desk.

 

[Armadillos]

Whenever I hear about some new regulation like this you have to assume someone is benefiting, wouldn't suprise me to find UHS quietly pushing for this to take a temporary hit and try to bankrupt the competition or something?

 

[WingedOx]

From what I have heard and seen is that they are considering applying these standards to outpatient clinics as well, which is ridiculous. I would link the proposals from CMS but I'm away from my desk.

Well as a psychiatrist whose clinic is a repurposed inpatient unit (my office is literally and old restraint and seclusion room) I guess I'll be only one allowed left in the country to practice.