Meningitis diagnosis often delayed

The first major paper looking at the causes and consequences of meningitis in the UK has found that viruses are now the most common cause of meningitis in adults and a cause of substantial long-term ill health. The paper also found that the management of many patients with meningitis is sub-optimal.

The study by researchers at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Infection and Global Health, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, funded by Meningitis Research Foundation (MRF) and the National Institute for Health Research, studied the diagnosis and treatment of more than 1000 patients with suspected meningitis.

It was found that diagnosis of meningitis is often delayed due to unnecessary brain scans being performed before lumbar puncture—which is the essential investigation to determine the cause of the illness. The majority of patients (81%) had a brain scan and 70% of those took place before lumbar puncture, otherwise known as a spinal tap.

Recommendations in national guidelines* urge doctors to perform a lumbar puncture within the first hour in patients with suspected meningitis unless the patient has particular symptoms which make it unsafe to. Only 12% of patients studied should have had a brain scan prior to lumbar puncture if the guidelines had been followed.

Cases of bacterial meningitis—the life threatening form of the disease—have significantly reduced over the last few decades following the introduction of vaccines against some of the most common types, and the study found that viral meningitis now accounts for the majority of cases. Being able to quickly determine which bacteria or virus is causing the illness is essential for the appropriate treatment of patients. Antibiotics should be given urgently to those with bacterial meningitis, but not viral meningitis, as viruses don’t respond to antibiotics.

Delays in diagnosis mean that antibiotics are often inappropriately used in patients with viral meningitis, resulting in a longer than necessary stay in hospital, which poses a considerable burden on patients and the NHS and potentially also contributes to the problem of antimicrobial resistance.

Patients in the new study who were investigated promptly with lumbar puncture were also more likely to have a specific cause of the meningitis identified, and to spend less time in hospital. Overall, the specific virus or bacteria causing the illness was not identified for 43% of patients.

Dr. Fiona McGill from the Institute of Infection and Global Health. University of Liverpool, said, “This study provides the first estimate of the incidence of viral meningitis in UK adults. It shows that viral meningitis is now a major cause of meningitis, but often the management is not quite right. It’s a concerning finding that so many unnecessary brain scans are taking place and that these appear to be delaying the correct diagnosis.”

Dr. Mike Griffiths, senior investigator on the study, added, “Diagnosing a specific cause of meningitis quickly is key to getting patients on the right antibiotics, if needed, or avoiding unnecessary antibiotics in those with viral meningitis. Once viral meningitis has been diagnosed, efforts should focus on treatment of the symptoms and expediting discharge from hospital which would be less distressing for patients and ease pressures on the NHS.”

Vinny Smith, Chief Executive at MRF said, “Meningitis can strike without warning and the bacterial form of the disease can kill in hours. Many survivors have long-term, disabling after effects as serious as brain damage and deafness. It is impossible to tell the difference between bacterial meningitis and a milder viral infection, even for a doctor. This is why it’s crucial not to delay performing the lumbar puncture.

“The findings in this study are really significant. It’s clear that the time it takes to get a correct diagnosis is having serious consequences and the national guideline is not being followed. Around the world, there is a pressing need for improved rapid diagnostic tests for meningitis. We are supporting research to that aim.”

 Explore further: Poor treatment of meningitis in kids can lead to tragedies warn experts

More information: * www.britishinfection.org/files … _published_proof.pdf

The Lancet Infectious Diseases (2018). www.thelancet.com/journals/lan … (18)30245-7/fulltext

https://bit.ly/2KBFWQN

Controversial cost watchdog to expose ‘unsupported’ price hikes on old drugs

U.S. drug cost effectiveness organization Institute for Clinical and Economic Review routinely clashes with pharma by arguing that new drug prices are too high. Now, the group plans to spotlight price hikes on old drugs that aren’t supported by new clinical evidence.

ICER plans to convene a group of experts for annual reports on drug price hikes without new data to justify them. Among the experts are representatives from Merck & Co., Regeneron, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Patients for Affordable Drugs. The first report is expected early next year.

Pharma’s routine price hikes have made countless headlines in recent years, beginning in 2015 with enormous increases from Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Turing, the pharma then led by Martin Shkreli. The controversy’s latest iteration came last month with the Trump Administration’s drug pricing plan.

The administration says it aims to boost pricing negotiations and competition, provide incentives for lower list prices and help lower patients’ out-of-pocket costs. Already, the FDA is highlighting complaints about regulatory abuses that stifle generic competition.

ICER, for its part, wants to expose the rising prices on older meds that drive up U.S. drug spending. Early this year, for instance, Wells Fargo analyst David Maris spotlighted dozens of price hikes from Pfizer, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Sanofi and other companies. He predicted one increase—AbbVie’s 9.7% price hike on megablockbuster Humira—would cost the U.S. health system $1.2 billion this year alone.

In recent years, ICER and pharma companies have clashed over prices set on new drugs. The group has said prices for cancer meds, PCSK9 cholesterol drugs and more are too high, while companies hit back by questioning the ICER’s motives and review processes.

But the organization has also endorsed some. It recently found that Amgen and Novartis’ new migraine launch Aimovig, priced at $6,900 per year, is cost effective after “existing preventive treatments, which are far less expensive.” The companies agreed with the assessment but said ICER’s analysis might underestimate Aimovig’s cost-effectiveness.

“Patients have been waiting a long time for an option developed specifically for migraine prevention, and decisions as to who should try Aimovig should be left to the discretion of the physician based on patient need,” an Amgen spokesperson told FiercePharma.

ICER also found that new CAR-T cancer drugs from Gilead Sciences and Novartis—which cost $373,000 and $475,000 per year, respectively—”seem to be priced in alignment with clinical benefits over a lifetime time horizon.” ICER also recently signed off on the price of Roche’s new hemophilia med Hemlibra.

However, ICER has hit back at the stickers for meds to treat osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis and more. Most recently, the group said Vertex’s cystic fibrosis drugs Kalydeco, Orkambi and newly approved Symdeko would need discounts of 77% to be considered cost-effective. Vertex responded in a strongly worded letter that the analysis is flawed.

https://bit.ly/2KijIXS

Hospitals Grappling With Prolonged Painkiller Shortage

There is another opioid crisis happening in the U.S., and it has nothing to do with the overdose epidemic: Hospitals are frequently running out of widely used injected painkillers.

Manufacturing shortages are forcing many doctors and pharmacists to sometimes ration injected opioids, reserving them for the patients suffering most. Other patients get slower-acting or less effective pain pills, alternatives with more side effects or even sedation.

Medical groups are urging regulators to help, saying some people having surgery, fighting cancer or suffering with severe burns are getting inadequate pain control. They also say shortages frequently cause medication switches that could lead to deadly mistakes.

Earlier this month, the American Medical Association declared drug shortages a public health crisis, saying it will urge federal agencies to examine the problem as a national security threat and perhaps designate medicine factories as critical infrastructure.

Injected opioid shortages have happened before, in 2001 and 2010, but they weren’t as acute and long-lived, experts say. This one started almost a year ago and is expected to last into next year.

“It’s definitely the most severe I’ve seen in tracking drug shortages for 17 years,” says Erin Fox, a University of Utah Hospitals pharmacist. She tracks national medicine shortages and recalls two patients dying due to medication errors during the 2010 shortage.

Such shortages steal time from patient care, increase hospitals’ costs and affect just about every department, including operating rooms, emergency departments and cancer clinics. Doctors occasionally find opioids missing from emergency carts and surgery supply trays, “borrowed” by colleagues needing them for other patients.

The shortages started hitting hospitals last summer, after the Food and Drug Administration found sterility and other serious problems at a Pfizer factory in Kansas. The company, which makes 60 percent of the country’s injected opioids, had to slash production to fix the problems.

By January, shortages were so bad hospitals started creating teams to manage their supplies, said Michael Ganio, director of pharmacy practice at the 45,000-member American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

The group’s April survey of 343 hospital pharmacists found 98 percent had dealt with moderate or severe shortages of the key opioids for treating serious pain: morphine, fentanyl and hydromorphone, better known as Dilaudid. Many hospitals were completely out of at least one.

Shortages of generic injected drugs have become normal. Profit margins are tiny, so only a handful of companies make them, and none can dramatically increase production when a rival stops manufacturing.

With the opioid shortages lingering, hospitals and medical groups have set guidelines for stretching supply, including transferring injected painkillers from large vials into several smaller ones or syringes.

Some worry such workarounds invite mistakes.

Michael Cohen, president of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, an independent group that compiles voluntary error reports, says mix-ups also occur when nurses or pharmacists substitute unfamiliar painkillers or ones with different concentrations than normal.

Cohen recently received several reports of surgical patients who stopped breathing. Some had overdosed when fentanyl wasn’t available and they mistakenly were given the same amount of much stronger sufentanil. Those patients were saved.

Hospitals also are grappling with shortages of regional anesthesia — local injections of lidocaine, bupivacaine and a third painkiller standard for eye surgery, orthopedic procedures and knee and hip replacements.

Dr. Ruth Landau, director of obstetric anesthesia at Columbia University Medical Centerin New York, says maternity wards for months have faced a critical shortage of the fast-acting version of bupivacaine.

That’s risky because if a woman in labor starts bleeding or her baby isn’t getting enough oxygen, obstetricians must perform an emergency cesarean. Anesthesiologists sometimes have had to use a slower-acting bupivacaine version, which may delay delivery and could harm mother or baby.

“We’re playing with fire,” worries Landau, a vice president of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology.

In the emergency department at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Dr. Ali Rajarecently had an appendicitis patient who needed intravenous morphine or low-dose Dilaudid. Instead, he had to resort to fentanyl, which wears off quickly, so additional doses were needed frequently.

“He was lucky. The nurses were free to do it, and so he wasn’t in more pain,” Raja recalls.

He tells patients he’ll try pain pills first and switch to IV medication if they don’t work, but “by then, the patient has had pain for longer.”

That’s not an option for the many hospital patients who are sedated, intubated, vomiting or too frail to swallow pills. And because pills can take 45 minutes to start working, they’re a poor choice for patients with broken bones, internal infections and stabbing or gunshot wounds.

Often, patients need a slightly higher opioid dose than one vial holds, but opening a second vial requires discarding the unused portion to avoid contamination.

“Having to choose between underdosing the patient or not having a medication to treat another patient later that day is incredibly frustrating,” Raja says.

At MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, palliative care specialist Dr. Ishwaria Subbiah now devotes extra time to choosing painkillers as availability changes. She says already-distressed advanced cancer patients need reassurance when she is forced to take them off a scarce injected painkiller that was working.

“Cancer pain can be absolutely excruciating, more than what a pill can manage,” Subbiah notes.

At Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health Care, outpatient surgery facilities and cancer clinics are as affected as acute-care departments, and which painkillers are scarcest varies constantly, said chief pharmacy officer Sabrina Cole.

Valerie Jensen, FDA’s head of drug shortages, said the shortages triggered by Pfizer’s problems may ease slightly in the next few months.

The three much-smaller makers of injected opioids — Fresenius Kabi, West Ward and Akorn — have begun making more. They’re putting factory workers on overtime, adding more shifts and switching some manufacturing lines from less-crucial medicines to injected opioids.

The FDA has been expediting approvals those companies need to make more opioids, including allowing new product formulations.

The agency also let Pfizer distribute some glass syringes prefilled with opioids that were held back because of possible particle contamination and cracks in stoppers. Hospital pharmacists have to examine each syringe closely and then filter the contents in a complex, multi-step process.

Meanwhile, Pfizer Inc. doesn’t expect to have most of its injectable opioids back in full supply until the first quarter of 2019, says John Kelly, the firm’s head of manufacturing quality.

The New York-based company acquired the McPherson, Kan., factory when it bought the drugmaker Hospira in 2015. To fix the plant’s troubles, Pfizer decided to replace production lines and other technology, particularly huge equipment-sterilizing machines called autoclaves that can take two years to build, install and test.

It’s spent more than $300 million so far.

Planned shutdowns last summer to start upgrades took longer than expected, FDA inspectors found other problems that needed fixing, and product demand rose, triggering shortages, Kelly said. He said production now is increasing somewhat each week.

https://bit.ly/2tFoW5F

CVS May Be Less Vulnerable to Amazon’s Healthcare Attack Than Walgreens

Not all companies are equally at risk from the Amazon.com (AMZN – Get Report) juggernaut.

CVS Health Corp. (CVS – Get Report)  may be better-equipped than Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (WBA – Get Report) to handle Amazon.com Inc.’s (AMZN – Get Report) move into the pharmacy business — at least according to an RBC Capital Markets analyst.

Amazon on Thursday, June 28, said it was buying venture capital-backed online pharmacy PillPack, sending shares of drug store companies and drug distributors plunging. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Wall Street Journal reported that the price tag was about $1 billion.

In a note on Friday, RBC analyst George Hill said the diversified assets of the pending CVS-Aetna Inc. (AET – Get Report) combination “on a pro forma basis should enable CVS to better weather the risk that Amazon is able to grab pharmacy market share versus WBA.” CVS in December agreed to acquire Aetna for $69 billion.

Hill lowered his price target on CVS to $84 from $91 on the heels of Amazon’s PillPack deal, but said it will not be easy for Amazon to squeeze pharmacy margins in the near- to medium-term. He pointed to factors such as the  “the stickiness of payer/pharmacy relationships, decreasing share of mail order, and PillPack’s tiny market share.” On Friday, CVS shares were down 1% to $65.07 after having dropped 6% on Thursday after Amazon’s deal was announced.

If Amazon does take market share and squeezes margins in the medium-term, Hill wrote that CVS is the better-equipped pharmacy to continue growing earnings before interest and taxes.

“Front-end revenue, where we view Amazon as posing a continual obstacle to growth, is just ~7.5% of our CVS/AET [estimated 2019 pro forma revenue], whereas it is ~19% of our WBA  [estimated 2019 pro forma revenue],” Hill wrote.

PillPack, founded in 2013, delivers medications in pre-sorted dose packaging and coordinates refills and renewals. It is available in 49 states.

Co-founder and CEO TJ Parker, a second-generation pharmacist, said in a Medium post in November that PillPack expected to generate more than $100 million in revenue in 2017.

Walgreens CEO Stefano Pessina said on an earnings call Thursday said his firm is “not particularly worried” about Amazon’s PillPack acquisition, but added that Walgreens is “not complacent.” He also reiterated that the role of physical pharmacies “will continue to be very, very important in future.”

A CVS spokeswoman said in an email on Friday that CVS believes it is “well-positioned in the market and ahead in this area.” She noted that CVS has multi-dose packaging capabilities and offers its ScriptPath Prescription Schedule, launched last fall, for patients managing multiple prescription medications.

Shares of Walgreens, which plummeted 9.9% on Thursday, were down another 0.5% to $59.42 on Friday. Amazon shares were flat on Friday afternoon after rising 2.5% on Thursday.

https://bit.ly/2MCxdhK

CEO’s risk-taking pays off at Array

When asked what personality trait helped him most in his work as CEO of pharmaceutical company Array BioPharma, Ron Squarer said, “A willingness to take risks and endure failure towards goals that really matter.”

He explains it comes with the territory and that his early work in oncology commercial development at Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) was a good training ground for that kind of thinking.

“At the time, they had 18 cancer drug candidates progressing in human clinical trials,” he said.

It was an effort Squarer said led to “critical progress” in the war on cancer.

But the progress didn’t come without difficulties. “There were also many trial failures, lost investment and disappointment,” Squarer said. “In tackling big problems like cancer you don’t get one without the other — success doesn’t come without risk.”

It’s not surprising Squarer ended up in the industry — he’s long been drawn to medicine.

“When I was first exposed to human biology, genetics and biochemistry, I knew I wanted to learn more and be part of the effort to get the human body back on track when it is not functioning properly,” Squarer said.

When he arrived at Array, what excited him most was the quality of people. (Squarer is beginning his seventh year with Array this summer — asked to step into the CEO slot in June 2012 to make Array a viable competitor to the big pharmaceutical companies.)

“Array had a highly-productive, tightly-integrated world-class research group driven to impact human disease as a stand-alone company,” he said.

But added to that, he said, were several good partners such as Genentech, Roche, AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN), Amgen (NYSE: AMGN), Novartis (NYSE: NVS) and Celgene (NYSE: CELG), among others.

“Array had many paths to achieve the goal of helping patients,” Squarer said.

Specifically, he said the team at Array emphasized three key values: “One, do the right thing; two, do it with a sense of urgency and creativity, as people are in critical need; and three, ensure we have the knowledge we require to succeed.”

Squarer says the best part of leading Array has been seeing the company’s scientists and clinical development experts translate Array’s science into patient benefit.

“That has brought us to this point where we are preparing to launch our first two cancer treatments, binimetinib and encorafenib, into the market in the coming weeks, pending approval,” Squarer said.

More recent good news on those two drugs: In June, Array announced updated results from trials to tackle an advanced form of melanoma. Findings showed median overall survival was 33.6 months for patients treated with encorafenib and binimetinib versus 16.9 months for patients treated with another drug as a monotherapy.

When asked which achievement at Array has been most important, Squarer talked about studies.

“Registration studies are the final stage before submitting trial results to regulatory authorities for approval to commercialize new treatments,” he said. He went on to mention 10 studies currently advancing related to eight Array-owned or partnered drugs, saying his team has real potential to extend and improve the lives of patients around the world.

“There’s nothing more rewarding than finding new treatments for patients in desperate need,” Squarer said.

Update: The week this story was published, the FDA approved one of Array’s treatments for certain types of melanoma.

---

Name: Ron Squarer

Title: CEO

Company: Array BioPharma, Inc.

Industry: Health and Life Sciences

Twitter: @arraybiopharma

Location: Boulder

Phone: 303-381-6600

Website: arraybiopharma.com

https://bit.ly/2KANTWf

Healthcare: Drug Pricing Concerns Weigh on Valuations, Creating Opportunities

• Overall, healthcare valuations have slightly fallen to a price/fair value of 0.98, down from 1.01 at the end of the first quarter and 1.04 at the start of the year, but the differences in industry valuations continue to suggest drug, biotech, and drug supply chain industries are the most undervalued areas. Within these industries, our top picks are  Allergan (AGN),  Roche Holding (RHHBY), and  McKesson (MCK).
• U.S. governmental reforms addressing drug pricing should not have a material impact on the most profitable region of the world, which should ease pricing concerns that are weighing on the drug and biotechnology industries.
• Research and development trends continue to deliver strong data in areas of unmet medical need, such as cancer and immunology, which should drive strong long-term growth for drugs with solid pricing power.
• The strong cash flows of the largest healthcare companies continue to focus on acquisitions and share repurchases and we expect an acceleration of acquisitions through the reminder of the year.

U.S. governmental rhetoric on bringing drug pricing down will not likely have a major impact on the largest drug market in the world, despite concerns that we believe have weighed on valuations. The Trump administration’s policy paper titled “The Trump Administration Blueprint to Lower Drug Prices and Reduce Out-of-Pocket Costs” largely supports increasing generic drug competition, slightly strengthening Medicare drug price negotiations, improving drug price transparency, and providing more information to help patients lower out-of-pocket costs, all of which we believe have a limited impact on branded U.S. drug prices. In aggregate, we think the proposals would likely impact less than 1% of U.S. drug spending, excluding the potential changes to negotiations for Medicare Part B drugs, which could offer another 1%-2% reduction in U.S. drug spending depending on the exact implementation.

Within the backdrop of pricing concerns, drug and biotech firms are focusing development on innovative drugs in areas of unmet medical need where pricing power remains strong. Major advancements in immuno-oncology drugs from  Merck (MRK), Roche, and  Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) should change the paradigm of treatment for lung cancer, one of the most prevalent deadly diseases. Additionally, drug advancements in immunology led by  AbbVie (ABBV),  Johnson & Johnson (JNJ),  Eli Lilly (LLY), and  Novartis (NVS) are offering new treatments that are significantly more effective and safer in areas of rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and inflammatory bowel disease.

Turning to capital redeployment, acquisitions, share repurchases, and dividends continue to be the focus for the larger healthcare companies. Mergers in the healthcare supply chain, including  Cigna (CI) buying  Express Scripts (ESRX) and  CVS Health (CVS) acquiring  Aetna (AET), remain on track and both look to create scale to lower costs. Additionally, share repurchases continue with AbbVie’s recent $7 billion-plus share repurchase showing an example of significant capital use in buying back stock. We expect the large healthcare firms will continue to buy back shares and likely accelerate acquisitions to boost earnings-per-share growth.

Top Picks

 Allergan (AGN)

Star Rating: 5 Stars
Economic Moat: Wide
Fair Value Estimate: $263
Fair Value Uncertainty: Medium
5-Star Price: $184.10

Unlike most of its peers in specialty pharma, Allergan retains one of the most attractive product portfolios and innovative pipelines, particularly in its core markets of aesthetics, ophthalmology, gastroenterology, and central nervous system. Allergan’s diverse portfolio, key durable products including Botox, and healthy pipeline support a wide economic moat and mid-single-digit organic earnings growth over the next five years, in our view. The company has used a nice mix of focusing on core internal research and development strengths while supplementing its pipeline with M&A, which creates numerous capital-deployment opportunities following the $40 billion sale of its industry-leading generics unit to  Teva Pharmaceutical (TEVA)back in 2016.

McKesson (MCK)
Star Rating: 4 Stars
Economic Moat: Wide
Fair Value Estimate: $210
Fair Value Uncertainty: Medium
5-Star Price: $147

Despite major near-term headwinds, McKesson should remain an essential link in the pharmaceutical supply chain. Several headwinds have pressured the firm’s operations and stock. The loss of material volume as a result of customer consolidation, slowing branded drug price inflation, a mix shift toward specialty drug products that are costlier to distribute, and increased competition for small/independent pharmacy market share have formed a confluence of negative variables that have built in significant near-term uncertainty for the drug distributor. However, we believe these are near-term issues and McKesson will be able to power through the recent volatility, as it is a critical partner to both retail pharmacy clients and drug suppliers. This has given investors an opportunity to acquire shares of a wide-moat company at a material discount. While there are some remaining headwinds associated with a changing pharmaceutical supply chain, we believe McKesson will be able to effectively offset this issue, win its share of contracts in the future, and thrive long term. McKesson is in the process of better positioning itself as a critical player in the lucrative specialty pharmaceutical market niche, which will eventually bolster its wide economic moat.

Medtronic (MDT)
Star Rating: 4 Stars
Economic Moat: Wide
Fair Value Estimate: $105
Fair Value Uncertainty: Medium
5-Star Price: $73.50

As the market-leading pure play in medical technology, Medtronic has an unmatched, extensive product portfolio, stretching from surgical consumables to implantable devices for cardiac conditions. We think the market is overly focused on the waning of some of Medtronic’s product cycles in key cardiac device markets and underappreciates how the firm has shifted the dynamics of competition away from innovation exclusively. Medtronic has pioneered ways to benefit from the shift to value-based reimbursement through risk-based contracting, which has gained a foothold with providers and payers. We expect Medtronic’s efforts to solidify preference at that level should better insulate its products from competition, even when the firm is in an unfavorable product cycle.

Roche Holding (RHHBY)
Star Rating: 5 Stars
Economic Moat: Wide
Fair Value Estimate: $41
Fair Value Uncertainty: Low
5-Star Price: $32.80

We think the market underappreciates Roche’s drug portfolio and industry-leading diagnostics, which conspire to create sustainable competitive advantages. As the market leader in both biotech and diagnostics, this Swiss healthcare giant is in a unique position to guide global healthcare into a safer, more personalized, more cost-effective endeavor. The collaboration between its diagnostics and drug-development groups gives Roche a unique in-house angle on personalized medicine. Also, Roche’s biologics constitute three fourths of its pharmaceutical sales; biosimilar competitors have seen development setbacks while Roche’s innovative pipeline could make these products less relevant by their launch.

Quarter-End Insights

Stock Market Outlook: Some Values to Be Found in Defensive Sectors
Healthcare, breakfast, and gassing up the car are always necessary, even during downturns.

https://bit.ly/2tQq1qx

Penn Medicine, Universal Health ready $30M psych hospital

The $30 million Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital — a joint venture between Penn Medicine’s Lancaster General Health and Universal Health Services Inc. of King of Prussia —­ is hosting an open house Saturday to give community members the first look at the Lancaster region’s first freestanding psychiatric hospital.

“The purpose [of the event] is to de-mystify what psychiatric care treatment is all about,” said Jayne Van Bramer, who was hired in November to serve as the new hospital’s CEO.

“When you come into a psychiatric hospital, even if you are voluntary, when that door locks behind you it can feel very confining,” she said. “We want to show them all the treatment options that will be available, which include things like art therapy and music therapy.”

Heisman Trophy Winner and one-time Philadelphia Eagle Herschel Walker will be the featured speaker at the June 30 open house, where he will share his personal story of self-discovery and his mission of being a voice for others experiencing mental illness.

Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital was built to replace and expand the current 36-bed psychiatric unit at Lancaster General Hospital, and to satisfy the growing demand for mental health services. An estimated 30,000 adults in Lancaster County have been diagnosed with a behavioral health condition, according to a recent community health assessment conducted by Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health.

“This is a really wonderful opportunity where we took the best of two strong organizations and brought them together to make something new,” Van Bramer said.

Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital CEO Jayne Van Bramer was previously vice president of behavioral health at the 169-bed Brandywine Hospital in Chester County.

Features of the 126-bed Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital include:

• The county’s only dedicated inpatient unit for adolescents,
• A dedicated women’s trauma unit for sexual-assault victims or women with a history of traumatic injuries because of domestic violence.
• Day-treatment services for adolescent, adult and older adults.

Van Bramer said the 77,000-square-foot hospital at 333 Harrisburg Ave. is just one floor, and each unit has secure access to a courtyard with walking paths and outdoor therapeutic space. The hospital also has active day rooms and quiet rooms for patients, and a gynamsium.

The hospital’s philosophy of care, Van Bramer said, is one of understanding and hope being the driver of change.

“We will try to empower individuals in our care by giving them choices and using collaborative decision making, and using the best in evidence-based medicine,” she said.

Van Bramer said the hospital will also embrace a holistic approach to care that will include everything from a full-time chaplain to address patients’ spiritual needs and a registered yoga teacher who will lead daily meditation session for patients, physicians and staff.

In designing the hospital, she said, UHS and Lancaster General wanted to create a “spa-like” setting for patients. “I think we accomplished that,” Van Bramer said. “The colors are soothing and the artwork is all nature scenes.”

Stengel Hill of Kentucky served as the architect for the project and Warfel Construction Co. in Malvern, Pa., was the builder.

Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital will have a soft opening for patients on July 9. Its plan is to operate the hospital with a daily census of about 10 patients during the summer, then ramp up operations after the Joint Commission conducts its accreditation survey for the facility in August.

When the hospital is fully operational, it will have a staff of about 250 full-time employees.

Van Bramer said the staff expect to be active outside the walls of the medical center as well. “Good hospitals don’t exist in isolation,” she said. “We will be very involved in community events. Will will work to address the stigma of, and misconceptions people have about, mental illness.”

https://bit.ly/2lItWSB