OSH Gets Legislative Help

By Dustin Kass, dustinKass@miconews.com

Additional state funding will create more than 60 additional jobs at Osawatomie State Hospital next year.

OSH officials submitted a request for just under 50 full-time equivalent positions to staff a new 30-bed unit at the hospital, and on Monday, OSH Superintendent Greg Valentine said the $1.5 million request had been approved by the Kansas Legislature.

“We’re very pleased,” Valentine said. “It was very much needed.”

Lawmakers passed legislation last year giving the hospital $2.7 million to open the additional unit to help reduce capacity issues, but no money was included at the time to staff the unit.

The new positions will range from physicians and psychologists to janitors and maintenance personnel — “anyone we need to open a new unit,” Valentine said. This year’s funding will pay for staffing for about half of the fiscal year, he said, which falls in line with the projected opening of the new unit.

The new 30-bed unit, which would be located in Biddle Building, could be completed by early 2009, Valentine said, with internal demolition work on the unit kicking off as soon as June or July. All architectural work on the unit is already complete, and a pre-bid meeting on the project was held last week. Completion of the project is expected to take six to nine months.

The new unit should help ease the capacity problems OSH has battled all year, Valentine said. The construction of the unit would raise capacity from 176 to 206 beds, a significant jump for a facility that has been over capacity about 30 percent of the time in 2008, he said.

“It’s a struggle,” Valentine said. “We end up in the mid-180s sometime. We even hit 196 once … And that causes us to overshoot our budget, since we spend more on staffing, pharmaceuticals and feeding the additional people.”

OSH officials also requested adding 25.6 full-time equivalent positions to staff the hospital’s existing units. The request stated the additional positions would give the hospital the minimum number of direct care and nursing staff needed to provide for patient care and safety. The cost was estimated at $888,635 in fiscal year 2009.

On Monday, Valentine said he thought funding had been approved for 12 full-time equivalent positions, just below half of what OSH had requested.

“We’re certainly appreciative,” Valentine said of gaining the additional dozen positions. “Every little bit helps.”