1971-03-02 - Laserfiche WebLink

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389 She explained that at the end of 1970 the Clinic was using some of their savings, money paid by Replace and other assets not paid by the Town to meet their budget. Mrs. Welch said she would explain anything the Board did not understand about the services at the Clinic. Dr. Ellicott said he felt that the hours spent in Staff consultation should not be billed to the Towns in his opinion this was overhead expense. He also said that when any hospital or clinic used trainees it was an expensive service. A trainee can interview patients and. then he must go back to the professional for consultation. I feel this service is necessary but it is expensive and using trainees can be inefficient. Mrs. Welch said we have to interview families separately. A disturbed child will not talk_ to anyone if he or she feels the person is also seeking* one of his parents. Dr. Cosgrcvo said he felt $33. dollars per hour was ex- pensive. also we have no way of knowing how many hours a person is seen by a professional or a trainee or whether they are seen by e psychiatrist, psycholdgist or a social worker all this could make a difference in the ever -all picture of the clinic. Mrs. Welch said if the Board would take all the professional hours spent on each patient and break it down they would see that the service was only costing 19.81 per patient. Dr. Cosgrove said this clinic has requested more money from the Towns each year. I should think you would reach a plateau and start stabelizing instead you seem to be accelerating. You have a great deal of help for the number of patients. You keep speaking of working with the schools, now we know Lexington has a number of trained psychologists in the schools, the school budget also has 33 thousand dollars set aside for psychiatric consultation. The Drug Abuse Committee has 10 thousand dollars and out of that they pay McMannus. Replace has just received a grant of 10 thousand dollars and then your increased budget makes it quite a sum for the tax payers to pay for mental health. Mr. Lambie said maybe we should have a committee to study this problem. Mrs. Welch again cited individual cases being treated at the clinic. and also talked about the out patient care for Metropolitan State Hospital patients. She said she did not think that Dr. Ellicott cr Dr. Cosgrove believed too much in the work being done at the Clinic. Dr. Cosgrove and Dr. :llicott said they did feel there was good being; done at the clinic but they also felt there Has a great deal of help for the number of patients treated and that the costs should be studied very carefully. After further discussion Mrs. Welch retired and the Board again discussed the amount of money requested by the Clinic for 1971.