Royal Alex upgrades focused on mental health, addictions
The Royal Alexandra Hospital is adding 16 beds as a means of integrating regular and emergency care with mental health and addiction support, according to Alberta Health Services.
“This will be unique to Alberta, but I think it forms the basis of how we might do all planning for our future hospitals,” Edmonton zone addiction and mental health executive director Mark Snaterse said.
The hospital will build beds tailored to needs of mental health and addiction patients, the tender released June 30 said.
More staff, such as social workers and addictions counsellors, will be hired to support those needs and the transition to out-of-hospital support, Snaterse said.
The rooms will be designed with clear sightlines and the elimination of anything patients could use for self-harm, but are designed to be therapeutically welcoming, he said.
“It’s not going to feel like a correctional institution, but it’s still going to have all of those elements of safety,” Snaterse said.
The $15-million upgrade begins this summer and should be done by winter of 2016, he said.
On the sixth floor, the current 30 adult acute care beds will be spread across two wards, almost all going into single rooms, and six psychiatric beds will be added, he said.
To the emergency room, four safe observation and assessment beds and six complex medical detox beds will be built in existing empty space, he said.
“The idea is to build a program that not only treats their medical needs in terms of withdrawing them from the drugs and alcohol, but also addresses their mental health needs and their addiction needs,” Snaterse said. “Sometimes these people keep coming back to hospital over and over.”
Improving hospital support is encouraged, but emergency rooms shouldn’t be the first point of contact for people with mental illnesses, said David Grauwiler, the Albertan executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association.
“Not everybody needs to be admitted,” Grauwiler said. “We have a long way to go.”
Instead, counselling should be more affordable, as the auditor general highlighted in his report on Monday, Grauwiler said.