By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — At separate meetings last week, the Kosciusko County Commissioners on Tuesday, March 12, and Council on Thursday, March 14, heard similar presentations from The Bowen Center about the organization’s past, present and future.

Bowen Center CEO Dr. Rob Ryan told the Council Thursday, “So much of what we do happens quietly behind the scenes. Most of our work happens one-on-one, and I just love an opportunity to share some things we’re doing and tell you some stories.”

He said he also wanted to make sure the council knew more about Bowen and that Bowen gets a pulse from the council if they’re meeting the community’s needs.

Representing Kosciusko County on the Bowen Center Board of Directors are Dan Woods, Sheriff Jim Smith, Cindy Brady and Roxanne Gonzalez.

“We cover five board counties. Each of the counties have three representatives on the board. Kosciusko gets an extra one because their headquarters is here,” Ryan said.

In the last several years, he said Bowen has really been trying to make sure they have a focus on their patients.

“It’s not that we haven’t before, but our values are respect, integrity, mission and stewardship, and when you think about respect, you think about, if you wanted to go get healthcare in this community you’d go to Parkview or you’d go to Kosciusko Lutheran Hospital. And you think about the lobby, the waiting room, the place where you receive services. And then I was thinking a lot about where we are located, and how our lobbies look and so on,” Ryan said.

“And so for the past four or five years we’ve really been preparing to roll out in our five core counties an elevated look — something that when you see one of our buildings, you know that’s one of The Bowen Center locations.”

One of those first Bowen Center buildings is open and running just past Columbia City proper. Ryan said one of the first things a person will see at the building is a big sign to celebrate the things patients are doing and to motivate others to be successful.

“So certainly, the building is something that we wanted to enhance,” Ryan said.

Bowen Center has purchased property to move from its 850 N. Harrison St. location to property between Aegis Dental and Goodwill.

“Again, many reasons for that. We want to be outfront and center. We want to make sure that, again, we’re elevating that location. We’re looking at having a groundbreaking in the fall, and also we’ll be finishing our building that we’re doing in Marshall County probably right around the same time. So we’re excited to do that,” he said.

Each building, depending on the square footage, is costing roughly $7 million to $8 million. The new building in Kosciusko County will be on the upper end of that cost spectrum, Ryan stated.

“The other thing that I’m really passionate about, and that we make from a treatment standpoint – a major initiative – is this idea of total health. … We know now that the entire body contributes to how we feel, thoughts and so on. And we also know that people who have mental illness struggle with chronic diseases, and sadly end up passing away many years earlier than the general population,” Ryan said.

He decided that Bowen Center needed to look at the issue of total health and how they are treating the people they are taking care of.

“I had some data that really was jaw-dropping and something that really tells me that we are really ready to take what we do to the next level,” he continued.

In the last four years, people with a serious mental illness that get service eight or more hours a day, there were 23 who died. Of those, Ryan said, 16 were male, seven were female.

“If you think about the U.S. population, the average age that you would expect a female to live to is around 80. The average age is 77 for men. The average age of the ladies that passed away who had a serious mental illness was 48. The average age of males were 50,” he said.

Those statistics are not unique to Bowen Center or here in Kosciusko County, Ryan said. “There’s research that suggests around 25 years is erased from your life if you have a serious mental illness in your twenties. A lot of reasons for that. One of the most important reasons is because they have complex difficulties that need to be managed by a team. And integrative care is what we’re bringing to the community to help these individuals,” he said.

Ryan then presented two contrasting stories. The first version of the story was “the first 62 years that we’ve lived here. We’re proud of what we’ve done, and you’ll have heard a story like this. But the second story we’re going to tell you is our next 62 years – same character, same person. And you’re going to see the difference of how we work and who we’re going to be.”

After Ryan concluded his two stories, Mike Murphy, Bowen Center senior director for Kosciusko County, presented on the 2023 annual report.

During 2023, the entirety of Bowen Center provided 74,680 outpatient services; 68,820 Bowen Health Clinic services; 363,308 skills coaching services; 661 Department of Child Services families served; 4,894 hospital patient days; 20,440 transitional living patient days; 185,267 additional recovery services; and 1,991 opioid use disorder patients served.

Bowen Center has 1,169 total employees.

Looking at funding, Kosciusko County provided $749,340, and then Bowen Center turns that into “$1.5 million in free care,” Murphy said.

Under uncollectibles, Murphy pointed out that charity care, free assistance and bad debt totaled $8,218,937 in 2023.

“So that’s that free care that we’re talking about for the entire center. We’re in almost 30 counties. I’m proud to say that Kosciusko County takes up about 20% of that free care,” he said.

There are 351 employees in Kosciusko County, with 10,211 patients served and 97,716 patient visits.

Tess Ottenweller, Bowen Center vice president of intensive services, talked about the Crisis Service expansion at the Center.

“So we know that rapid, accessible, compassionate crisis support saves lives and improves mental and physical well-being,” she said. “We want to be a leader in that, and the state of Indiana is really moving toward this crisis continuum expansion.”

She said they’ve been partnering a lot with the Division of Mental Health and Addiction and 988 to focus on these new crisis services.

“When you think of crisis care, I want you to think of three components: One is somewhere to call, that’s 988. The second is someone to respond, those are mobile crisis teams. And then the third is a safe place to go, and that’s what we call Crisis Receiving and Stabilization Services,” Ottenweller said.

If someone is experiencing a crisis not during typical outpatient business hours, she pointed out that Bowen’s Pierceton location has expanded crisis stabilization services 24/7, including nights, weekends and holidays. This service is in place now.

“I want everyone in the community to hear, if you or a loved one, a friend, a family member are experiencing a mental health crisis, come see us,” she said.

She touched on the mobile crisis teams. “This is in development – and, remember, this is someone safe to respond – and by ‘in development’ I mean we are plugging along with our plan — hiring, training. We’ve been working closely with Chris Fancil and the C.A.R.E.S. (Community Assistance Resources & Emergency Services) team to work collaboratively with them. They’ve been doing some great work in the community, and we want to make sure that what we’re doing is partnering with them, complimenting what they are already doing, and learning some best practices from them,” she said.

Ottenweller said she is excited about the mobile crisis teams because not only does it mean that Bowen Center gets to enhance some of the services it’s already doing in the community, but it’s also opening a new workforce for Bowen.

“These are peer support specialists. Peer support specialists are people that have lived experience in the behavioral health arena — maybe they themselves have a mental health condition or a substance abuse disorder, or they experienced it with a loved one. It’s so common, and when we work with a peer, it shows that it really helps individuals in crisis be better engaged, increased safety, stay in services, navigate challenging systems to continue to follow up with care. It’s transformative and we are so excited to be able to start offering this,” she said.

By year’s end, Ottenweller said they will have two-person mobile crisis teams who are available 24/7.

In a final comment, she stated Bowen Center will be decreasing the amount of unnecessary hospitalizations for people. They will be decreasing emergency department usage, and decreasing the overuse of resources like law enforcement “when maybe they are not the ones that need to be used in a behavioral health emergency,” she said.