King County is facing a mental health crisis.
Despite a unanimous ruling by the Washington State Supreme Court last August that affirmed boarding psychiatric patients in emergency departments for hours before beds become available was unconstitutional, there is still the problem of where to safely put these patients after they’ve been discharged.
This year in King County alone, more than 3,000 psychiatric patients who are a danger to themselves and/or others and are involuntarily committed, will be turned away from emergency rooms with virtually no place to go, according to Valley Cities Counseling & Consultation.
The nonprofit, which serves low-income mental health patients in Federal Way and South King County, said that is not right.
This year, Valley Cities responded to a request for proposal from King County.
“They selected us and another provider to find a location and go through the permitting process and either remodel or build from the ground up an inpatient psychiatric unit,” said Ken Taylor, chief executive officer of Valley Cities.
The other provider selected is Telecare Corporation.
What Valley Cities has planned is the Woodmont Recovery Center, composed of five buildings on an 8-acre campus, including an evaluation and treatment center that houses 16 involuntary beds and eight voluntary beds.
“We hope to start construction on the evaluation and treatment center this fall,” Taylor said. “By late in the second quarter of 2016, we hope to be open to admit patients.”
The mental health campus will be located at the corner of 272nd Street and Pacific Highway South in Des Moines, one block north of the Federal Way city limits.
“This is the first time we have built a campus from the ground up, and we think it’s groundbreaking,” Taylor said. “We’re figuring out the ways to lower the barriers to access. People who have a history of mental illness, many of whom are low income, over-utilize emergency departments. They may not have a primary doctor or clinic; what we’re trying to do is help them to navigate this complex system of care and services.”
With permission from the city of Des Moines, Valley Cities has plans to construct five buildings on the campus over the next four to five years, as funds become available.
The probable second building under construction, Taylor said, will be a three-story outpatient and administration building. Valley Cities is in discussion with Health Point to provide dental and primary medical care in this building. Valley Cities will provide behavioral health services.
“(Our partnership with Health Point) has been a stunning success,” Taylor said. “What we want to achieve at Woodmont is an integrated approach to providing medical care to those in need.”
Taylor said Valley Cities considers medical care to be broadly defined, and looks at the whole body.
“There is a lot of research that substantiates connecting the body to the head,” Taylor said. “If you have treatment staff talking to one another, you get better clinical care.”
Also in the second building will be Valley Cities’ consolidated administrative offices.
“Our administrative folks are scattered at multiple sites,” Taylor said. “Since the Affordable Care Act began in January of 2014, we have seen 200 to 250 new patients each month. We have locations throughout the Valley and all of those places are bursting at the seams.”
Taylor said a third building will serve as a dependency recovery center for those addicted to hard drugs, prescription medications, or alcohol.
“This is in response to a crisis that exists in our county,” Taylor said. “It doesn’t get very much attention. One person a day in King County is dying from addiction, heroin in particular. We have a critical shortage of beds for people to detox from the legal and illegal drugs that they are addicted to. When you have someone who is clean or sober, you have to find treatment providers.”
To meet that need, 44 detox beds will be in the recovery center to help people get clean and sober and get engaged in treatment, whether with Valley Cities or some other provider.
A fourth building will be the Recovery Café, modeled after the Recovery Café in downtown Seattle.
Taylor said people who have been clean and sober for a minimum of 24 hours come to the Recovery Café six days a week.
“It’s a wonderful place for people to come inside, have a cup of coffee, have a meal, participate in groups, ease their way into the treatment process,” Taylor explained.
The fifth and final building will house the medical dispensary, helping people addicted to drugs who require medication-assisted treatment.
Taylor said patients who come to Woodmont will literally be able to walk from building to building.
“In some cases your medical record can be shared between buildings,” Taylor said. “There will be a lot more coordination between service providers.”
According to The National Report Card on the State of Emergency Medicine of 2009, Washington state is now last among the 50 states in psychiatric beds per capita. Since 2007, the state has reduced the available beds by 15 percent. This equates to 8.2 beds per 100,000 people.
“The county is probably between 50-75 beds short per day on what it needs,” Taylor said. “(We estimate) we will reduce the problem by a third. We’re making an in-road, but not solving it.”
The Woodmont Recovery Center, when completed, will cost in the neighborhood of $40 million. Taylor said project funding has come from a combination of public funds, Valley Cities’ funds, and commercial financing. This includes a $1 million grant from the King County Mental Health and Substance Abuse Division.
In addition, the Washington state capital budget, approved by Governor Jay Inslee on July 1, includes an allocation of $5 million to help defray costs for Valley Cities’ mental health campus.
