Idaho has only 2 independent psychiatric hospitals. Now 1 is headed for bankruptcy.

A local psychiatric hospital is in trouble, as its parent company heads toward bankruptcy.

Safe Haven Healthcare is continuing to operate its Boise hospital and three assisted-living and skilled-nursing facilities in Bellevue and Wendell. But some employees have quit, and those who remain are relying on a judge’s orders to get their paychecks.

The CEO and owner, Scott Burpee, and his attorney blame Safe Haven Healthcare’s financial crisis on a fire last fall that gutted its Pocatello hospital. Burpee also suggested in court that a failed buyout by an employee contributed to the bankruptcy. The company got buried under an avalanche of debt, they said.

The company filed for bankruptcy last month.

“I would say it stems from the fire in Pocatello,” said Safe Haven’s bankruptcy attorney, Matthew Christensen of Angstman Johnson in Boise. “The hospital in Pocatello was probably 50 or 60 percent of the total income to the companies at the time.”

Read more: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article218765310.html