SPOKANE, Wash. – MultiCare Deaconess Hospital wants to provide more mental health services to the community with its new behavioral health unit.
The hospital plans to add at least 20 beds in the new unit.
This is in response to an increase in mental health diagnoses over the last few years.
In 2022, MultiCare said suicidal thoughts was the 17th most common diagnosis at the Deaconess Hospital emergency room.
Last year, it became the eighth most common diagnosis.
MultiCare said the Deaconess emergency room saw way more people that needed mental health services than any of its other hospital emergency rooms.
“Think of your friends and family, people in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties. Mental health affects us all,” said Samantha Clark with MultiCare’s behavioral health network. “You show me somebody who has a mental health needs that doesn’t also have a medical need.”
That’s why MultiCare plans on taking a newly awarded $6 million grant and using it to expand the behavioral health services it offers.
MultiCare already offers outpatient services for people that don’t need to stay overnight at the hospital but it said adding inpatient services will make a big difference in how it can treat mental health needs.
“During your time with us, you’re wrapped around by an inter-disciplinary team of psychiatrists or psychiatric providers who provide consultation and diagnostic information, medication to help support you. You have social work, you have therapy, mental health services, nursing,” Clark said.
Clark said MultiCare is still in the beginning stages of planning its behavioral health unit.
She said MultiCare will have the second inpatient facility in Spokane for adults to help meet the growing need in the region.
“Not only do we see that services are well-utilized, but we also see that our community and the fast-paced population means we need to increase access and build more of those services to support the folks,’ Clark said.
MultiCare said it doesn’t know when when the new facility will open, but it will make a big difference in the community.
The hospital is working on finding space for its inpatient clinic and hopes to work quickly on a plan for construction.
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