COLUMBIAMEMORIAL.ORG LATE SPRING 2024 3 Behavioral health care services keep growing! Program will continue to grow in expanded hospital Over the past five years, CMH’s Behavioral Health and Care Management Department has grown more than three times its original size. When Allison Whisenhunt, LCSW, the department director, started working at CMH in 2019, the department only had five social workers. “When I started, most of the areas of the hospital were uncovered,” Whisenhunt says. The department has since grown to 14 full-time and two additional, intermittent social workers, plus Whisenhunt and Rebecca Larson, LCSW, department manager. CMH also employs Robert Sperry, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, who serves in the Astoria and Seaside Primary Care Clinics. “I chose to come to this organization because CMH wanted me to help grow a Behavioral Health program,” Whisenhunt says. “CMH leadership and the Board have been incredibly receptive to proposals to add social workers in different areas and supported adding a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner.” Departments covered include specialties such as primary care, pediatrics, women’s health, labor and delivery, emergency, cancer care, orthopedics, podiatry, urology, pulmonology, and hospice. “CMH has done a great job in how they have allowed us to structure this department,” Whisenhunt says. “Even though they are deployed to different departments, keeping social workers in a Behavioral Health department has been a huge retention tool for us.” The team serves both patients and CMH caregivers through one-on-one counseling appointments, a monthly grief support group, crisis intervention, navigating resources and more. Social workers help patients with issues ranging from anxiety to opioid substance use disorder treatment. Looking ahead to the future In CMH’s expansion hospital, the new facility will be equipped with what we are calling “Safer Rooms,” which will be used to accommodate a broader spectrum of patient types and acuity levels. “This will make it much easier for us to convert a room into a place where patients can’t hurt themselves,” Whisenhunt says. “They will be set up so those patients who need to be monitored 24/7 [can experience that] in a less invasive way, which will be safer for our caregivers as well.” The expansion will also include a space for social work to be fully integrated with the team in the Emergency Department, which was one of the first in which Whisenhunt and her team worked to add social workers. This improvement will also mean that the social worker can intervene immediately to offer assistance, rather than wait for a consult, and spend more time with patients. “It will make it so we can help at times when they might not even think to ask us for help, which is especially important in the Emergency Department, because things are so fast-paced and can change in a millisecond,” Whisenhunt says. WE’RE HERE FOR YOU! You can learn more about our Behavioral Health services on our website at columbiamemorial.org/behavioral-health. If you’re in crisis, go to your nearest Emergency Department or call 988.
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