Alvarado Hospital, a member of Prime Healthcare, hosted California Governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday, March 19, as part of his “State of the State” tour throughout California. The hospital was the fourth stop on the Governor’s four-day, five-location tour.
Alvarado Hospital was a choice of location for Newsom to delineate his ballot initiative as the hospital is the site of San Diego County’s newest Regional Behavioral Healthcare “Hub.”
The regional behavioral healthcare hub concept involves placing multiple layers of behavioral health treatment services at a single location, which is reflected in plans for Alvarado Hospital. The various treatment services collaborate with each other, as well as with other community-based behavioral health resources, to treat patients along a continuum of care with the goal of accelerating the transition from behavioral health crisis to sustainable, continuous, chronic care management.
At the press conference held at Alvarado Hospital, Newsom outlined a 2024 ballot initiative to bolster the state’s behavioral health system and address chronic homelessness among the mentally ill population in California.
Newsom, along with others including Dr. Mark Ghaly, Sec. California Health & Human Services; Senate Pres. Pro Tempore Toni Atkins; San Diego County Supervisor Fourth District Nathan Fletcher; Dr. Luke Bergman, Director, San Diego County Behavioral Health Services; and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg who authored both Proposition 63 and the Mental Health Services Act, spoke about tackling chronic homelessness and the behavioral health care crisis in California, as the two issues are often intertwined.
The Governor’s plan works with the CARE (Community, Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment) Court act which the Governor signed into legislation last year. The CARE Court act allows for civil courts to compel residents to accept treatment for substance abuse or behavioral health disorders. The Governor’s proposed bond-funded initiative provides for specialized and supervised housing.
Before the press conference, Alvarado Hospital CEO Kenneth McFarland gave a tour of the hospital to Newsom and other dignitaries.
The Alvarado regional behavioral health hub will consist of two new inpatient behavioral health Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) units (62 beds in total), a crisis stabilization unit (CSU), and an emergency psychiatric department. The Governor visited a model inpatient behavioral health patient room and visited the hospital’s Geriatric Behavioral Health Unit. The press conference itself was held in the future location of Alvarado Hospital’s Psychiatric Emergency & Crisis Stabilization Unit.
“We are experiencing a behavioral health crisis in San Diego,” explains McFarland. “Both the state of California, and our San Diego Health & Human Services Agency, have committed tremendous resources and thoughtful planning into strengthening our behavioral health safety-net, and Alvarado Hospital is proud to be a part of that effort. By answering this need for our county, we are reinforcing our commitment to being a true community hospital.”
The new Psychiatric Emergency & Crisis Stabilization Unit will be located in the hospital’s original emergency department, which was subsequently replaced by a state-of the-art 20-bed emergency department that opened in December 2019. The second and fourth floors in the hospital’s West Tower will be the home of the new inpatient adult behavioral health units. This new construction will be in addition to the existing 30-bed geriatric behavioral health unit located on the third floor of the hospital’s West Tower.
The county’s regional hubs are designed to relieve the strain on local emergency rooms and hospitals, where behavioral health patients are often treated.
“We are seeing more and more behavioral health patients with higher levels of acuity,” continued McFarland. “These patients require a specific form of care; consequently, when you have a rush of these patients into a general-care facility, it can create a volatile mix that may contribute to delays in delivering needed care to diagnoses and treatments. The regional behavioral health hub at Alvarado Hospital is a thoughtful way to treat a vulnerable, and oftentimes marginalized, patient population. The regional hub represents a more dignified and compassionate approach to restoring one’s health and wellness.”
(Foto de cortesía)
