FDR HOSPITAL CLOSES DRUG ABUSE UNIT

MONTROSE -- A substance-abuse program for the mentally ill at the veterans
hospital will close its doors today.

Hospital administrators at the FDR campus of the VA Hudson Valley Health
Care System last week said the unit has repeatedly failed to meet its goals
and that they were shutting it down in accordance with union guidelines.

Administrators could not be reached yesterday to elaborate on the unit's
shortcomings. The last two patients in the unit have completed their
program but will remain in the hospital, moving to the next phase of
treatment, a hospital spokeswoman said. Between January 2001 and February
2002, the unit for the mentally ill and chemically addicted served 262
patients.

Several employees of the MICA unit are questioning the hospital's
motivation in shutting it down. They say they are caught in the middle of
an internal dispute between the unit's head nurse and the administration.
All 21 unit employees are being transferred to new positions either at the
Montrose hospital or the Veterans Affairs campus at Castle Point in
Dutchess County.

A union representative said that even though they have lost the fight to
keep the MICA unit open, negotiations with the hospital over the workers'
job placement and security are continuing.

Administrators said their decision was not fueled by any labor issue but a
desire to overhaul the entire residential substance abuse treatment program
at Montrose.

The residential treatment program is made up of four components. In
addition to the MICA unit, there is a program designed for patients whose
primary problem is chemical addiction but who also have psychiatric issues.
There is also a post-traumatic stress disorder unit and a program that
helps homeless veterans find employment and housing.

Administrators plan to combine existing services into one program. The new
program will better assess each individual and design treatment based on
his or her needs. For example, under the current program, each unit offers
an anger management class. Under the new program, patients will find anger
management classes tailored for those just starting out and for those who
are further along in their recovery, said hospital spokeswoman Nancy Winter.

Winter said the hospital is making the changes because patients have asked
for more individual care.

In addition, doctors and administrators at Montrose decided on revamping
their program after visits to a VA hospital in West Haven, Va., and other
programs serving troubled vets, Winter said. She said they were using a
"treatment mall" model -- one large central treatment program with many
smaller, boutique-like programs inside it -- that hospital administrators
wanted to bring to Montrose.

The new program also is in response to the difficulty veterans have been
experiencing in making the transition back into their communities once they
completed residential treatment, said Montrose hospital director Michael Sabo.

"Folks get attached to the institution and are not able to go out in the
community," Sabo said at a meeting with administrators last week. "This
change will give them the appropriate coping tools."

The new program will have psychiatric, psychological, educational,
vocational and spiritual components. Treatment teams will coordinate the
patient's recovery plan. The program will be located in Building 12,
administrators said. The MICA unit was housed in Building 13.

"It will give us flexibility of treatment," said Dr. Joseph McFadden,
manager of mental health care services for the Montrose hospital. He is
overseeing the program's reorganization and will manage it once it is
completed.

"It will create an environment more conducive to reintegrating people back
into society," he said.

The hospital's residential program will continue to operate during the
reorganization, which administrators expect to complete during the summer.

A relatively new economic reality facing all VA health care agencies in the
Northeast is a decrease in federal dollars, said Jerry Donnellan, a
veterans advocate who is director of the Rockland County Veterans Service
Agency.

"We in the Northeast lost about 15 percent of our budget about five years
ago," Donnellan said. "We receive less money, and the cost of living is
higher here."

Donnellan said that alcoholism is 2.5 times more prevalent among the
country's 26 million veterans than in the general population. He estimated
that 20,000 veterans are in Rockland, 70,000 in Westchester and 7,600 in
Putnam.

"They are having to do more with less. They have health care needs that
they have to treat," Donnellan said. "Programs that seem less of an
emergency are probably going to get a smaller share of what's there."

Winter, the hospital spokeswoman, said the changes at Montrose are in no
way tied to budget constraints but acknowledged that the hospital receives
less money than it did several years ago.