A 34-bed inpatient psychiatric care facility will soon be operating out of Valley General Hospital in Monroe.
The new mental-health facility is being made possible through a collaborative partnership between Fairfax Behavioral Health and Valley General. The psychiatric hospital, which will serve older adult patients on both a voluntary and involuntary basis, will be located in the hospital's F wing. Fairfax will lease the space from Valley General and operate the hospital with expert psychiatric care staff that they provide.
"Across the state, many mental health patients are in crisis with very few options for treatment. Our collaboration with Fairfax Behavioral Health is one positive step forward to ease our state's overburdened mental health system and help ensure that mental health patients seeking treatment for all forms of illness have access to expert care,GÇ¥ said Valley General Hospital's Chief Executive Officer Eric Jensen in a recent press release.
Currently, the 1,500 square foot space being allocated for the new hospital is vacant, having once housed Valley General's own geriatric psychiatric inpatient unit which closed in 2011. The new agreement will allow Fairfax to lease the space from Valley General for up to 20 years, while both organizations remain independent.
Fairfax Behavioral Health was founded in Seattle in the 1930s and has been providing psychiatric care to the Seattle area for over 80 years. When the original Fairfax facility needed room to expand, the owners moved the building by barge across Lake Washington to the Juanita area, where the hospital is situated today.
The facility, located near Milam Recovery Center in Kirkland, has recently undergone a 68-bed expansion.
Jensen shared that caring for mentally ill patients has become complex and problematic for health care professionals due to an extreme shortage in the availability of psychiatric care beds. Hospitals have been forced at times to house mentally ill patients in emergency departments while waiting for psychiatric beds to become available.
While not an optimal solution, it was at least an option. But soon this alternative will be illegal.
The Washington State Supreme Court recently upheld a 2013 ruling made by a judge in Pierce County which makes it unlawful for hospitals to house mentally ill patients in emergency rooms or acute care facilities without access to psychiatric evaluation and care.
Conversely, federal law prevents hospital emergency departments from discharging unstable patients.
"It's been a crisis for hospitals to try and figure out how to deal with this,GÇ¥ said Jensen.
Having a mental health facility onsite will serve to ease that burden, at least for Valley General. The added psychiatric care facility is one of several strategies recently employed by Valley General to help improve the hospital's level of services. Overall, Jensen sees the partnership as a mutually beneficial relationship.
Fairfax will be leasing the space and will provide psychiatric care through their own professional staff which will include psychiatrists, psychologists, pharmacists, registered recreational therapists, registered nurses, nurse practitioners and other mental health professionals.
Valley General will be able to provide housekeeping services, dietary services and laboratory services on a much more cost-effective basis than if Fairfax had to secure those services on their own. Valley General will also have medical professionals available to treat psychiatric patients suffering from medical conditions not related to mental health.
"I think it's really exciting that the certificate of need was recently approved, and that this hospital is probably going to be open shortly after the first of the year,GÇ¥ said Jensen. "It's going to provide a valuable service that's not currently available in east Snohomish County.GÇ¥
For additional information about Fairfax Behavioral Health, please visit the website at: http://www.fairfaxhospital.com/index.stml. For more information on Valley General Hospital, please visit: http://www.valleygeneral.com/.
It is anticipated that the facility will open in 2015.
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