Center responds to mental health needs
Memorial Hermann’s walk-in clinic is one of the first in the area that will help patients regardless of their ability to pay
Memorial Hermann recently opened a new Mental Health Crisis Clinic in Humble, the first of four facilities designed to respond to the shortage of resources available to individuals suffering from chronic mental illness in the greater Houston area.
The 2,468-square-foot clinic is located on the campus of Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital, 18951 Memorial North in Building 9813, Suite A.
Theresa Fawvor, senior director of behavioral health services, said the communities in most need of the clinics were chosen after 14 years of research.
The second facility will serve Spring Branch, a third will be placed on the west side of Katy and the fourth will be housed near Pasadena.
Memorial Hermann is still in the process of determining the exact locations of the remaining three.
Fawvor said the clinics were made possible by the state’s Medicaid 1115 waiver, Texas Health Care Transformation and Quality Improvement Program Collaborative. The collaborative pays for five years.
The waiver provides fund--
ing to cover uninsured patients. Fawvor said many with health care problems have gone years without treatment because they were uninsured.
“In Texas historically, we’ve not done a very good job of funding mental health,” she said. “We rank 49th nationally.”
She said that, because of this lack of funding, many patients rely on emergency rooms for treatment.
“Unfortunately, that’s not an effective option,” she said. “They’re not getting the psychiatric care they need.”
Fawvor said that patients who could not get help in the emergency room or other facilities often end up incarcerated.
She said that diminished funding also led to the closing of a freestanding men- tal health hospital in Houston in 1999.
“Just because you close your doors, doesn’t mean that psychiatric needs go away,” Fawvor said.
Memorial Hermann created its psychiatric response team in 2001 to meet the needs for mental health care in its hospitals.
Fawvor said still more services were needed.
The last legislative session changed the equation, she said.
“Our mental health care services are normally cut and we walk away with diminished funding,” she said. “This session, we saw an increase.”
Fawvor said politicians have been motivated to address the issue of mental health after tragic incidents, like recent school shootings, that have been linked to untreated mental illnesses.
“These diseases, when left untreated, lead to death,” Fawvor said. “It’s not only about the person who struggles with it, but also all the others around that individual.”
When the Medicaid 1115 waiver came up, the psychiatric response team started brainstorming ideas for ways to expand services.
They settled on creating a series of clinics in communities surrounding the city.
“We went through our data and identified zip codes where the most chronic issues were,” Fawvor said. “All families, regardless of where they live, are impacted by mental illness. It cuts across socio-economic lines and cultural boundaries.”
When all four clinics are open and fully staffed, Memorial Hermann plans to provide patient access 24 hours a day, seven days aweek.
This walk-in clinic provides rapid access to initial psychiatric treatment and outpatient multidisciplinary services for patients who currently have little to no immediate access to mental health care, Fawvor added.
“This waiver is giving us the opportunity to be a part of changing the landscape of care for these individuals,” she said. “We’re energized by the fact that they will finally get the care they need.
“Regardless of their ability to pay, wewant to serve them.”
Manish Pandya, psychiatric response team director, was part of the leadership team that developed the program.
“In 2013, the Memorial Hermann Psychiat- ric Response Team performed more than 6,200 evaluations and found increasingly complicated co-occurring medical and psychiatric disorders,” he said. “There were few available communitybased treatment options for these patients.”
Pandya said the clinics will establish a model for recovery.
“This clinic and the other three that will follow are going to provide an opportunity for individuals living in the communities that Memorial Hermann serves an access point to get care at a more appropriate level,” he said. “They can get the right care and have a more sustainable recovery.”
Pandya said that keeping individuals healthy and safe is the hospital’s primary concern.
“We really believe that whatwe’re doing will reinvent the waymental health care in the community is provided in the public sector,” he said. “We’re reinventing it where there were gaps in services.”
Fawvor said that opening the first clinic was a learning experience, and she feels confident that the team will be apply the lessons learned to the next three facilities.
She said the second clinic is scheduled to open in Spring Branch in October. The third clinic is slated to be completed in June 2015, and the fourth should open the following October.
“We’re focused on getting these services out to the community as quickly as possible,” Fawvor said.