Proposal could mean downsizing for CVTC

Central Virginia Training Center would be downsized to 300 residents and send people who become ill to a Lynchburg hospital’s emergency room if a proposal from state officials in Richmond is carried out.

Officials also said they want to “find an alternative use” for much of the CVTC property, which 25 years ago housed 3,500 people on its 350-acre campus in Madison Heights.

The proposals seek to cut operating and maintenance costs while at the same time upgrade some buildings with sprinklers, generators and other features to keep residents safe, said officials with the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.

“CVTC’s building usage is inefficient,” agency officials said during a June meeting in Madison Heights, where the new proposals were presented to parents whose children live at the center.

The plans are the latest in a stream of proposed changes over the past four years for CVTC as state officials confront how to balance the needs of developmentally disabled residents with soaring costs of fixing or replacing outdated buildings as state funds grow tighter.

Residents’ families found the proposals disturbing because they seem to be coming fast, said Martha Bryant, vice chairman of the CVTC parents’ group.

“In five years they plan to close 30 buildings and decrease the census below 300 residents,” Bryant said. “There are many unanswered questions about what is going to happen.”

One proposed change reduces the training center’s population of developmentally disabled people, which stood at 442 in June, by almost one-third within five years.

Another proposal would involve sick residents who now are treated in an acute-care center, which is a hospital-like facility on the training center’s grounds.

An experimental transition to fewer acute-care beds started this week under the proposal from the Behavioral Health department, which before July 1 was called the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services.

Bryant said parents worry disabled residents could be forced to live in community-based group homes. “Hundreds of families choose CVTC” to be their relatives’ homes “and they are trying to force us out,” she said.

She also said an illness outbreak at the center could send a dozen or more disabled residents to a hospital that would already be crowded during a cold-weather flu season.

“From a parental health care provision, you worry about access to care and wonder, ‘Are we going to overuse their emergency room?’” said Bryant, who is a nurse.

Centra Health, which runs Lynchburg’s two hospitals, is studying the CVTC plans’ impact on Centra’s operations and expects to complete an analysis in 60 days, said David Adams, senior vice president.

Del. Shannon Valentine, D-Lynchburg, said her discussions with DBHDS officials indicated they plan to close the acute-care center “but not the services.”

CVTC will continue to have a physician providing 24-hour, on-site coverage and will keep open a medical, skilled-care unit, Valentine said.

“The intention is to provide the same level of care while trying to reduce costs, especially given that many of the beds in the acute care center are not being used.”

During the summer, the acute-care center typically has four or five sick patients, but that number has risen to 12 or 15 in the winter, Bryant said. The DBHDS proposal would send those patients either to a skilled-care unit with nurses at CVTC, or else to a Centra emergency room, she said.

Bryant said that state Sen. Steve Newman, D-Lynchburg, told the parents’ group he would propose a budget amendment in next year’s General Assembly to ensure that a physician is present 24 hours a day at CVTC.

Allocations to CVTC have been an issue in the past several General Assembly sessions. This year, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and legislators switched part of a $43 million allocation that earlier had been earmarked for CVTC to new group homes, taking $10 million from the original amount.

The General Assembly diverted another $8 million to a state training center in Chesapeake, leaving $23.5 million for CVTC.

The changes art part of a nationwide movement to house disabled people in communities instead of institutions. Virginia has been slower than most states in following that trend, a University of Colorado study shows.

This year, the DBHDS has proposed spending $11 million to upgrade three buildings at CVTC and add generators at other buildings. One of those changes would move residents into buildings with smaller rooms, affording more privacy.

That leaves about $12 million still not budgeted. Meghan McGuire, spokeswoman for DBHDS, said the department hopes to assign funds to specific projects this year.

“All of the $24.5 million will be spent on the CVTC campus,” McGuire said. “An analysis is being done to determine the extent and cost of renovations for a fourth and fifth building.

“We are moving quickly through the normal design and review process to address the issues in these older buildings and plan to have funds budgeted by this fall,” McGuire said.

Valentine said those analyses need to move forward.

“Every delay means that we are not installing sprinklers, providing generators and making the necessary renovations,” she said. “The complete funding is critical if we are to dress the buildings in which our residents live.”