The Valley Health hospital system is offering a new resource for patients experiencing a mental health crisis.
The Winchester Medical Center is opening a $2.5 million dollar Emergency Psychiatric Assessment, Treatment and Healing unit that provides patients with immediate access to a team of mental health clinicians while avoiding an emergency room setting.
“One in seven people that present to the emergency room are in a substance use or mental health crisis,” said Dr. Louis Nardelli, the system’s behavioral health medical director.
Those patients could be seeking a wide range of mental health care for diagnosis as common as anxiety and depression or severe mental illness, like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
The specialized unit, which is set to begin accepting patients Oct. 29, serves dual purposes: to provide the appropriate setting and informed care for people seeking emergency mental health care and to decrease the number of patients seeking mental health treatment in the emergency room.
Dr. Karen Dorr, Valley Health’s senior director of behavioral health services, said the unit’s setting is more appropriate to de-escalate patients in crisis.
“The [emergency department] is not the best place for these patients, because it’s just not a therapeutic environment,” Dorr said. “We may be able to meet their needs there, find their outpatient resources and discharge them.”
A Winchester Medical Center patient can go directly to the EmPath unit, where they will be screened to establish if they can be treated there or if they have a more immediate medical emergency. Then a team of behavioral health clinicians will provide a comprehensive assessment for the patient and determine their needs. The process includes providing a case manager, prescription refills or an inpatient admission, if necessary.
“We really thought being able to come directly into an EmPATH unit — just to ring the doorbell, come in and get taken care of — was the best way to provide that care,” Dorr said.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Right Help, Right Now program, a three-year roadmap to address gaps in Virginia’s mental health care services, helped fund the unit.
The Winchester center is the second EmPATH facility in the state. The first opened last year in Lynchburg.
While other hospitals in the commonwealth also have specialized units that provide mental health care, Dorr said this EmPATH unit is the only facility that allows patients to bypass the emergency room.
Dr. Scott Zeller, a California-based psychiatrist, created the EmPATH model and provided guidance in the Winchester unit’s development.
Valley Health doesn’t currently have plans to add similar units at its other hospitals, Door said, but it will continue to expand access to mental health care across its system. That includes increasing patients' access to telepsychiatry, expanding existing mental health care facilities and building out behavioral health outpatient services.
“When we look at the EmPATH unit, that’s one piece of a puzzle,” Dorr said. “Because we’re addressing mental health in our community in so many different ways.”
