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March 20th, 2008
St. Elizabeth Regional Health announces the return of inpatient psychiatric services to Home Hospital
 LAFAYETTE, IND – St. Elizabeth Regional Health announced today that inpatient psychiatric services at Home Hospital will return on Monday, March 24, 2008. Home Hospital stopped offering inpatient services on Jan. 31, 2007 due to lack of physician coverage.
Dr. Christopher D. Cobbs, a psychiatrist with the Sigma Medical Group, has been hired as medical director of Psychiatric Services. His position will be to see inpatients on the Psychiatric Units at Home Hospital and St. Clare Medical Center in Crawfordsville. Dr. Cobbs will not have an outpatient practice at this time.
During the year that Home Hospital was not offering inpatient services, those in need of inpatient care were referred to other facilities – often outside of Lafayette. Terry Wilson, president and CEO of St. Elizabeth Regional Health, said “It’s been our mission to bring this much needed service back to our community. We’re thrilled to be able to return this important service line to Home Hospital and to serve as a mental health resource for those in need. We’re also delighted to announce that nearly all of our dedicated professional staff will return to their positions within the unit.”
The 20-bed psychiatric unit provides specialized care to voluntary, adult psychiatric patients with a wide variety of mental health conditions. “The opening of the Home Hospital psychiatric unit will more than double the number of inpatient beds available for the mentally ill in our region,” said William G. LeFurgy, Ph.D. and executive director of The National Alliance on Mental Illness-West Central Indiana (NAMI-WCI). “There remains a genuine need for our community behavioral health agencies to step forward and work in a collaborative fashion in support of the continuing recovery of the mentally ill.”
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Background:
St. Elizabeth Regional Health, the corporate entity that includes St. Elizabeth Medical Center and Home Hospital, is a member of the Sisters of St. Francis Health Services, Inc. (SSFHS) system. The Sisters of St. Francis began its mission in the United States with the founding of St. Elizabeth in Lafayette in 1875, and through the course of more than 130 years, SSFHS has grown into a leading Midwest health care system with 13 growing hospital campuses in Indiana and Illinois.
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