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Mercy Health St. E’s adding to mental health units
YOUNGSTOWN
Work has begun to ready the seventh floor of Mercy Health’s St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital to expand its acute-care inpatient behavioral-health unit and establish a geropsychiatric unit.
The $5 million project is expected to be completed by January, 2016, said Don Koenig, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Mercy Health Youngstown.
St. Elizabeth Youngstown is the fifth Mercy Health hospital in Ohio and Kentucky to be included in its Behavioral Health Expansion Initiative, Koenig said.
The Youngstown project will increase the number of acute-care inpatient beds from 16 to 24 and establish a 14-bed geropsychiatric inpatient unit.
The project also includes partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs for up to 100 people a day, said Lisa Brandyberry, Ph.D., market director for program excellence for all behavioral-health units in Mercy Health’s facilities in the Youngstown/Warren area.
Partial hospitalization is five days a week, six hours a day, and intensive outpatient care is three days a week for three hours a day, Brandyberry said.
The program also includes placing a behavioral assessment team, or BAT, in the emergency departments at St. Elizabeth Youngstown, St. Elizabeth Boardman and St. Joseph Warren to assess behavioral-health needs and quickly get patients the appropriate care, Koenig said.
The seventh-floor behavioral-health and geriatric units are going into the space vacated when the maternity and neonatal units were moved to St. Elizabeth Boardman.
The renovation and construction were necessary because the old medical design is not conducive to contemporary programming and environment of care for behavioral-health patients, Koenig said.
A medical floor is designed for patients who are going to stay in their rooms. It is very institutional, Brandyberry said.
“That is the opposite of the environment we want to create. We want it to be much more warm, inviting and comfortable,” she said.
The new adult acute inpatient and geropsychiatric units will each have multisensory rooms with a variety of options to either calm or stimulate. Each unit will have a library room with books and educational material.
The Behavioral Health Initiative will not only benefit patients, but the entire community by creating jobs and bringing care closer to home, making it easier for family to see the patients, Mercy Health officials said.
The staff of 48 full- and part-time employees man the current 16-bed adult behavioral unit, but between 30 and 40 new employees, such as registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, social workers and psychiatrists, will be needed, Brandyberry said.
St. Elizabeth Youngstown’s expansion of its behavioral- health program and creation of a geropsychiatric is important to the community, said Duane Piccirilli, executive director of the Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board.
With the population aging, a specific unit to take care of older patients makes sense, Piccirilli said.
Further, he said, the units will help keep patients local instead of being sent out of the county or the state for treatment.
“It will save on ambulance costs and make it easier to keep track of their treatment and for family to visit,” he said.
The state-of-the-art program will provide optimum care for depression and other mental illnesses and help patients manage their mental illnesses more effectively, hospital officials said.
“We’re excited about this because it will help us to better care for the community,” Koenig said.