Also 300 employees will be laid off and the addiction and
pediatric units at Somerville Hospital will be closing as well. Ninety
beds will be moved from Somerville to the Cambridge Hospital.

Doug
Bailey, CHA Spokesman said,"Some of these decisions are painful and we
know it's a tough time for many people. From our perspective we've been
able to preserve a lot more than we've had to cut."

Cathy Levin
of M-Power, a consumer run advocacy group for the mentally ill is
worried about the effects the budget cuts are going to have on the
mentally ill segment of the community. Cuts also include a large amount
of beds in the mental health wards of Whidden Hospital in Everett.

"If
you don't have community services, there's a good chance the person in
a psychiatric crisis is going to go through the ER. Sixty percent of
them (that go through the ER) are sent to a mental hospital. This slows
things down in the ER looking for a mental health bed for them, and
this slows it down for everybody in the emergency room. So my deepest
concerns are the beds being cut in Whidden," she said.

Levin
continued, "The mental health beds get cut because they aren't money
makers. Mental health beds are not profitable. In a sense you're
robbing Peter to pay Paul, because if the people can't get help in
outside resources, they come faster to the ER."

Mr. Bailey was
very aware of the suffering involved. "It's really difficult to convey
how much painstaking research and deep thought goes into these
decisions. We're keeping the ER open and the Cambridge Hospital is less
than a mile away."

Levin continued , "The Cambridge-Somerville
Social Club was just cut. It was a fantastic day program for people who
are too disabled to work. There were a lot of interesting people.
Artists and writers and some of the intellectual community who have
college degrees but at some point in their lives just lost it. As these
programs are cut, it's just going to cause homelessness. Where are
people supposed to go and what are they supposed to do?!"