Posted on 12 April 2013.
Architect?s illustration shows the plan for Carolinas HealthCare System?s new Davidson hospital, off NC 73.
By DAVID BORAKS
DavidsonNews.net
Work is underway on Carolinas HealthCare System?s $36 million behavioral health ?campus? off N.C. 73 in east Davidson, and if all goes as planned, the hospital and out-patient mental health clinic will open in 2014.
Ground was broken Friday at the site, where CHS officials, local leaders and mental health experts talked about plans for the hospital, which they say fills a critical need in the region.
The 67,280 square-foot hospital in Davidson will have 155 employees ? including physicians and other staff ? and 66 ?acute-care? beds, providing short term hospitalization for adult patients in crisis. Right now, those patients often have little choice but to go to general hospital emergency rooms seeking help. And with a shortage of beds across the region, they sometimes are left there waiting until a bed opens up.
?With the behavioral health system as it exists today, there?s
Dr. Roger Ray
a huge unmet need all across the care continuum. But the flash point for that lately has been in acute care service, especially as it affects general hospital emergency rooms,? said Dr. Roger A. Ray, executive vice president and chief medical officer at Carolinas HealthCare System. ?(It?s) at a crisis point all across the country and particularly the states we serve.?
Before announcing the Davidson hospital last summer, Carolinas HealthCare had been looking for a site for a new behavioral health hospital for several years. CHS cited reductions in beds state-owned facilities and a growth in the need for care in the Charlotte region. The 66 state-permitted beds are being transferred from Broughton Hospital in Morganton.
The Davidson East site was a second choice for the Charlotte-based non-profit CHS after it failed to win approval for the project on land it already owned on N.C. 115 in Huntersville. The Huntersville Town Board in early 2012 voted against rezoning for a site off N.C. 115 at Verhoeff Drive.
The Davidson project didn?t require any additional zoning approvals. Davidson?s Town Board in September 2011 rezoned the property to allow for what planners called ?flex campus? development, which town officials said could include a health care facility.
The Huntersville site, which is surrounded by a neighborhood of single-family homes, faced loud opposition from neighbors before it was rejected. The Davidson site has few homes nearby, though a group of residents did fight the plan, at one point threatening to sue to halt the plans. That suit never materialized.
Town and CHS leaders and mental health advocates all say the hospital is an important addition, from both an economic development and a health-care perspective.
We talked to Dr. Ray this week about the hospital, its services and mental health care.
Q. What need will the new hospital meet?
RAY: ?With the behavioral health system as it exists today, there?s a huge unmet need all across the care continuum. But the flash point for that lately has been in acute care service, especially as it affects general hospital emergency rooms, which is at a crisis point all across the country and particularly the states we serve.
North Carolina?s legislature has asked for a study to contemplate some more in-patient facilities for a five-county area that includes Mecklenburg. The study suggests that need will continue to exist. So right now it?s about trying to meet the need. And there is a need for an acute inpatient site. (Patients) are being poorly served when all the beds are full and emergency rooms are full.
CHS is stepping up to our mission to provide care and making a pretty big commitment, at a time when others in the nation and Southeast are not making commitments. It is not all that we?re doing in behavioral health. We?re also beefing up our ambulatory (outpatient) presence, and treat patients earlier, at times in their illnesses when a hospital can be avoided.
Q. What kinds of services will be offered in Davidson?
RAY: Well there?s no emergency room there. These will be patients that are identified elsewhere, whether it be in a physician?s office, or in another acute-care hospital or an emergency room, who need and would be appropriate for an inpatient stay. We?ll be licensed for adults.
We?re seeing them typically because of an acute deterioration in a behavioral health need. A secure and restorative environment is what we?re shooting for creating there. The length of stay would typically be a week or less, as compared to long stays. That would not typically be what we?d do.
Hopefully over time, if we?re better at managing care across the continuum, the stay would be a few days only.
Q. What do patients in crisis do right now?
RAY: They typically seek out an emergency facility, usually in a general community hospital, because the only purely behavioral health emergency room (in this area) is at CHC Randolph. Physicians there assess you, and maybe begin treatment of some sort. If you need an in-patient stay, they begin looking for a bed, at Randolph or another hospital that has behavioral health, or in a state hospital. Sometimes that takes a day, sometimes that takes days and days. You might be left in the emergency room.
Q. The plans calls for a second building ? what?s that?
RAY: The second building will have a few thousand square feet (10,000 square feet) of a clinic-setting. That will be to see patients who don?t need to go into the hospital, or after they?ve been in the hospital.
Q. Say a little bit about your approach to care
RAY: It will be team-based, and that?s a modern concept. We?ll have a number of treatment professionals ? physicians, advanced clinical practitioners, like nurse practitioners, psychologists, social workers ? the total mix of team members at that facility. We?re projecting about 155 people working there.
A second concept is we want it to be part of the overall integrated behavioral health service, which goes all the way from screening to early treatment to acute care and after. Part of that role is for it not to be stand-alone treatment, but treatment that is connected to treatment after you no longer need acute care.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE
See previous coverage of the hospital and Carolinas HealthCare on DavidsonNews.net.
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