ASPIRE HOSPITAL: ABOVE & BEYOND
Aspire Hospital is a small 30-bed acute care hospital in Conroe that provides mental health services primarily to Montgomery County, but also responds regularly to requests in
helping meet the mental health needs of individuals in nearby counties.
Since people commonly emotional, healing and medical needs in addition to mental health needs, Aspire strives to provide services:
- Above and beyond what psychiatric hospitals tend to offer
- Above and beyond what state and federal regulations require
- Above and beyond what Medicare, Medicaid or commercial insurance pays for
“Individuals and families in our community need more than the bare minimum treatment traditionally provided for decades by psychiatric hospitals that regulations and insurance requires. At Aspire Hospital, we are dedicated to providing treatment for our patients that is above and beyond the minimum required and establish a new standard in mental health care for our community,” is the commitment of Aspire
Hospital’s current senior administrative team.
The above and beyond commitment Aspire Hospital has for our patients and
community is evidenced by the following 2016 facts:
- Began providing
- Community Education Series
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Full days of free depression screenings; which, in 2017, will be
- expanded to be provided monthly
- Music therapy
- Pet therapy Medicaid or community resources.
- All at no additional charge to patients, families, insurance, Medicare,
- Dedicated four beds permanently for complex-care (medical-psychiatric) to help minimize the length of time psychiatric patients spend in the overwhelmed emergency rooms (in Montgomery County as well as nearby counties) without the being provided the mental health
- treatment they so desperately need
- Established a Collaborative Community Mental Health Committee was established with Conroe Regional Hospital to further address mental health needs in the community; and, in 2017, will expand to include other medical and mental health providers in the community as well as law
- enforcement
- Extended visiting hours during the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays
- was established
- Family meals and activities on Thanksgiving was such a success, that as this article is being published, we are finalizing our plans to do the same for Christmas; and, have begun to discuss expansion of family
- involvement in 2017
- Opened a mental health partial hospitalization program (PHP) and an intensive outpatient programs (IOP)) to help reduce psychiatric readmissions and promote successful community living by providing the
- community necessary
- Project “Facility Uplift” granted by our Governing Board provided new:
- Couches (six)
- Love Seats (three)
- Table (one) and chairs (four)
- Painting was done in the dining room
- Tiled flooring in one hallway
During 2017:
- A library for patients and their families will be built and stocked in one of the community areas
- More tables and chairs will be furnished
- Painting will be done on the entire behavioral health unit
- Tiled flooring will be installed in the second hallway
We are absolutely thrilled to be providing these services for our patients and their
families as well as our community. We are actively pursuing the implementation of
further services, even more than indicated above, during 2017.
We are also enthusiastic about sharing more information in these areas with everyone
on an ongoing basis. Our first focus is on pet therapy.
SPOTLIGHT on PET THERAPY at ASPIRE HOSPITAL
We began facilitating pet therapy once a month to provide pet therapy to our inpatients and have been able to work with the pet therapists to increase the frequency to twice per month as well as expand to also provide this service to the outpatient programs we established earlier in the year.
The specially trained dogs that provide unconditional love to our patients also work in nursing homes, shelters, schools and more. Benefits are infinite, including boosting self-
esteem as well as relieving loneliness and boredom.
Following is a quote (just minutes after the first pet therapy took place) from our
wonderful Clinical Director, Erica Overshiner, MSW, LCSW:
“Hi everyone, I wanted to let you know we just finished up with our first round of pet therapy and it was a hit! The patients, especially the quieter ones, really enjoyed it and connected immediately with the animals. I was letting a patient’s son in and he said, ‘OH she doesn’t like dogs’ and then he walked in and saw her petting the dog beaming. He started laughing and said ‘Oh she hasn’t looked this good in a long time.’ This was really
neat to watch. Thanks again for being a part of this!”
This is the Aspire attitude. This is the Aspire dedication. This is the Aspire enthusiasm. This is Aspire putting patient care FIRST!