HELENA — Almost four years after the Montana State Hospital lost a key federal certification – and access to funding that went along with it – state leaders say they’ve officially submitted a request to get that status back.
“I want to be candid about there's pretty significant challenges, but we do have a path, and the window is now open,” said Matt Waller, health care facilities executive director for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.
Watch the video for more updates from DPHHS:
DPHHS leaders gave updates on the state hospital and other projects during a meeting of the Montana Legislature’s Children, Families, Health, and Human Services Interim Committee on Tuesday morning.
MSH, located in Warm Springs near Anaconda, is Montana’s only public psychiatric hospital. In 2022, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services terminated its provider agreement with MSH after reports of significant deficiencies at the facility – including some that led to patient deaths. Since then, leaders have been working on addressing the issues there.
Waller said the state has hired a medical director who’ll begin work in March. He said they have hired another 24 nurses in 2025, along with converting about 40 nursing positions from contracted “traveling nurses” to modified state positions.
DPHHS submitted its official request for recertification to CMS on December 23. Waller said the state is expecting authorities to acknowledge the request within about 30 days of submittal. He said CMS will then have to perform a new survey of the state hospital – unannounced, but likely sometime in spring or early summer.
Waller said it’s likely the state will need to take some additional steps in response to the survey.
“There will be findings,” said Waller. “We anticipate you turn over enough rocks, you open enough doors, you will find things that need to be optimized and improved. But we are committed to addressing those.”
The same day as DPHHS asked for recertification, they also moved the last patients out of MSH’s Spratt unit, which had housed older patients with dementia or severe mental illness – and had had some of the most serious reported safety issues.
The department now plans to fully rebuild the Spratt unit, this time as a 32-bed forensic mental health facility, to house inmates with mental health issues. Waller said the work could take just over a year and a half.
“The building will be taken down to the studs,” he said.
The DPHHS presentation Tuesday did not touch on the department’s plans to build a second mental health facility in eastern Montana. In November, leaders announced they had selected Laurel to host the new 32-bed facility. However, local leaders in the area have said they still have some questions about the details of the plan.
Also during Tuesday’s meeting, DPHHS leaders gave lawmakers an update on the $233 million in federal money Montana will be receiving through the Rural Health Transformation Program.
Every state initially planned for receiving $200 million per year from that fund, but federal leaders adjusted the amounts to account for the states’ plans and how rural they are. Montana received the fourth-most in the U.S.
That extra $33 million meant the state needed to revise its budget for how to divide up the money.
“CMS has indicated we cannot spend any of these funds until we resubmit that budget and get it approved by them, so our plan is to resubmit the budget this week,” said Gene Hermanson, DPHHS’ deputy Medicaid director.
Department leaders told the committee they’ll put another $7 million into training, recruiting and retaining rural health workers – a major increase over the $14 million originally budgeted for that goal. They’ll increase the amount earmarked for improving rural health care providers’ long-term stability from $70 million to $82 million.
