Officials with Fairview Health Services and Acadia Healthcare gathered a few blocks north of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on Wednesday for a ceremonial beam signing — a way to highlight of the ongoing construction of what will soon be one of the state’s largest purpose-built inpatient mental health hospitals.

The future hospital’s steel girders form a commanding sight at 559 N. Capitol Blvd, but given the project’s politically sensitive history, the absence of public health and state, city or county elected officials from the symbolic signing was notable.

Located at the former site of Bethesda Hospital, the 144-bed Capitol Park Mental Health Hospital will offer inpatient, intensive outpatient and “partial hospitalization” mental health treatment, including services for patients who are ready to leave an acute care setting but who may still need in-hospital services for three to six hours per day, three to five days per week.

“We are all pioneers in this work,” said Jeffrey Woods, an Acadia operations executive and former psychiatric nurse, noting that the Franklin, Tenn.-based healthcare and hospital chain operates 260 hospitals and treatment centers nationally and is now the largest provider of mental health treatment in the country.

“We are literally in the beginning phase of what we expect to be many, many generations … of (innovation) and reducing stigma,” Woods added, addressing a crowd of officials from the two healthcare networks and general contractor J.E. Dunn Construction Group.

Fairview officials said the three-level facility will open next summer at a time when inpatient mental health services are in high demand statewide and many youth and adults have been unable to access needed services.

Mental health advocates remain opposed

That said, the hospital — which will not have ambulance bays for emergency transport — has not been without controversy. Citing the need for new mental health beds, the Minnesota Department of Health approved the facility in September 2022 while acknowledging at the time “significant concerns” with its lack of an emergency room.

The Minnesota Psychiatric Society and other mental health experts have raised concerns that many patients will be transferred from other in-network hospitals, allowing for-profit Acadia to effectively cherry pick the wealthiest patients, leaving poorer, uninsured and harder-to-treat crisis cases to emergency rooms at outside hospitals.

Notably absent from the beam signing on Wednesday were officials from the governor’s office, the Ramsey County Board and Ramsey County Social Services, the St. Paul mayor’s office and the St. Paul City Council, as well as the National Alliance on Mental Illness and other vocal advocates for the mentally ill.

Reached shortly after the gathering, Ramsey County Board Chair Trista Martinson, St. Paul City Council Member Rebecca Noecker and Sue Abderholden, executive director of NAMI Minnesota, said they were unaware of the event and had not received invitations.

“We opposed this from the beginning,” said Abderholden, in a brief interview. “It’s a psychiatric-only hospital, as opposed to a psych-unit within a regular hospital, such as Region’s or Hennepin County Medical Center. They won’t have an emergency room, so they get to choose who they take into their hospital. They call it an ‘institute for mental disease,’ or an IMD, which means you can’t use Medicaid.”

“Because people with the most serious mental illnesses are on Medicaid, (surrounding) hospitals are going to serve people with higher needs, and they’re going to get a higher percentage of the Medicaid patients, which doesn’t pay as much,” Abderholden added. “Somebody who is homeless and has gangrene in their feet — are they going to take that person in their psych-only hospital? I don’t think so.”

Fairview and Acadia officials on Wednesday said there will be some primary care doctors located on site, offering what Woods called “care for the whole person, mind, body and spirit.”

‘Not here to serve our community’

Martinson said she had once approached the Acadia-Fairview joint venture with an open mind, but walked away from initial meetings a few years ago frustrated.

“It might be located in St. Paul, but it became pretty clear it is only for their clients,” Martinson said. “It was very clear to me from the beginning, despite our outreach and us trying to touch base with them, they were not here to serve our community. It was a for-profit entity that bought a building.”

Also among the Department of Health’s stated concerns in 2022, the state found that the new facility will operate under a “leaner staffing model than is the norm nationally and in Minnesota.” The state review noted the 144 new beds would partially — but not fully — offset mental health beds lost when Fairview gradually shuttered St. Joseph’s Hospital in downtown St Paul from 2020 to 2022.

And while the increased patient load from the closure of St. Joe’s had been absorbed by surrounding downtown hospitals, the state found “it is placing a strain on emergency rooms and inpatient mental health units.”

Fairview officials on Wednesday noted that some of their services had actually expanded in downtown St. Paul. St. Joe’s has since been converted into the Fairview Community Health and Wellness Hub. Bethesda Hospital, which had for many years offered 15 long-term acute care rehabilitation beds for the severely disabled, was demolished in 2023, but a new long-term acute care unit opened at the downtown Wellness Hub with 24 beds.

With an eye toward the economics of maintaining hospital systems, the state of Minnesota maintains a moratorium on adding new hospital beds without state approval.

Woods, in his remarks, acknowledged that getting state legislative approval for the Capitol Park Mental Health Hospital had been an extensive process.

Ultimately, however, “the Legislature, in their wisdom, waived the moratorium,” he said.

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By SUMAN NAISHADHAM (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Month after month, global temperatures are setting new records. Meanwhile, scientists and climate policymakers warn of the growing likelihood that the planet will soon exceed the warming target set at the landmark Paris 2015 climate talks.

Making sense of the run of climate extremes may be challenging for some. Here’s a look at what scientists are saying.

WHAT CLIMATE RECORDS HAVE BEEN BROKEN RECENTLY?

The European Union’s climate-watching agency Copernicus declared last month that it was the hottest May on record, marking the 12th straight monthly record high. Separately, the World Meteorological Organization estimated that there’s almost a one-in-two chance that average global temperatures from 2024 to 2028 will surpass the hoped-for warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times that was agreed in the Paris talks.

And one more: Earth warmed at a slightly faster rate in 2023 than 2022, a group of 57 scientists determined in a report in the journal Earth System Science Data.

ARE CLIMATE SCIENTISTS SURPRISED?

Not really. Many climate scientists say warming trends are following what they have studied and predicted based on the buildup of carbon dioxide from rising fossil fuel use.

In 2023, the levels of those heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere reached historic highs, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Carbon dioxide, in particular, which is the most abundant and important of the greenhouse gases produced by human activity, rose in 2023 by the third-highest amount in 65 years of recordkeeping, NOAA said.

WHAT DO THE SHATTERED RECORDS MEAN FOR HUMANS?

More suffering. Human-induced climate change has brought wild weather swings, increasingly unpredictable storms and heat waves that stay over a particular area for longer periods of time.

An Asian heat wave this spring forced schools to close in the Philippines, killed people in Thailand and set records there and in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives and Myanmar. Weeks of heat waves across parts of India last month also closed schools and killed people.

Life won’t end if temperatures exceed the 1.5-degree limit, but things will get worse, scientists say. Previous U.N. studies show massive changes to Earth’s ecosystem are more likely to begin between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius of warming, including eventual loss of the planet’s coral reefs, Arctic sea ice, some species of plants and animals — along with even worse extreme weather events that kill people and damage infrastructure.

“The Paris threshold is not a magic number. Reaching that level of warming over a multiyear average will not cause a noticeable uptick in the impacts we’re already witnessing,” said Jennifer Francis, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Climate scientists are steadfast that fossil fuel use must be phased out to stave off the worst consequences of climate change. The burning of fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — is the main contributor to global warming caused by human activity.

“Until greenhouse gas concentrations level off, we will keep breaking temperature records, along with increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events,” said Francis.

Renewable energy has been growing fast, but needs to grow faster still. Efficiencies are being studied, developed and rolled out all across the economy — in the ways we heat houses and buildings, for example, cook our food and make cement — but scientists say the need to adapt is urgent.

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By KATE BRUMBACK (Associated Press)

ATLANTA (AP) — An appeals court has halted the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump and others while it reviews the lower court judge’s ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the case.

The Georgia Court of Appeals’ order on Wednesday prevents Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee from moving forward with pretrial motions as he had planned while the appeal is pending. While it was already unlikely that the case would go to trial before the November general election, when Trump is expected to be the Republican nominee for president, this makes that even more certain.

The appeals court on Monday docketed the appeals filed by Trump and eight others and said that “if oral argument is requested and granted” it is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 4. The court will then have until mid-March to rule, and the losing side will be able to appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.

A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment on the appeals court ruling.

A Fulton County grand jury in August indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. It is one of four criminal cases against Trump.

Trump and eight other defendants had tried to get Willis and her office removed from the case, arguing that a romantic relationship she had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. McAfee in March found that no conflict of interest existed that should force Willis off the case, but he granted a request from Trump and the other defendants to seek an appeal of his ruling from the state Court of Appeals.

McAfee wrote that “an odor of mendacity remains.” He said “reasonable questions” over whether Willis and Wade had testified truthfully about the timing of their relationship “further underpin the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportional efforts to cure it.” He said Willis could remain on the case only if Wade left, and the special prosecutor submitted his resignation hours later.

The allegations that Willis had improperly benefited from her romance with Wade resulted in a tumultuous couple of months in the case as intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal lives were aired in court in mid-February.