Behavioral-health hospital to be built on East Side
HEALTH CARE /
A new inpatient behavioral-health hospital being planned by Mount Carmel Health System will be built on the East Side, a move that will leave Mount Carmel West in Franklinton without the medical system’s mental-health services, according to a filing with the city of Columbus.
Mount Carmel plans to build an 80-bed behavioralhealth hospital at 4646 Hilton Corporate Drive, said Tony Celebrezze, assistant director of the city’s Department of Building and Zoning Services. The new site will replace and quadruple the 20 inpatient behavioral-health beds at Mount Carmel West hospital, which is being closed.
The new 64,300-squarefoot, free-standing facility with a price tag of $26 million will have units for adult and geriatric patients, and for dual-diagnosis patients — those suffering from both mental-health issues and drug addiction.
Along with the mentalhealth units, the facility will include an electroconvulsive therapy center, an activitytherapy center and gym, outdoor-activity areas and an outpatient-therapy center. Use of a fourth unit will be based on community needs. Construction is expected to begin this year, with opening planned for fall 2018.
The new location is south of Interstate 70 between South Hamilton Road and Noe-Bixby Road, about 6 miles from Mount Carmel East hospital. Celebrezze said documents seeking a building permit for the new site were processed Monday.
Mount Carmel and partner Acadia Healthcare wanted to make sure the new location, to be called Mount Carmel Behavioral Health Hospital, was in the city, said Brett Justice, Mount Carmel’s senior vice president for strategy and system development.
“We feel it is important to keep behavioral health services within the city of Columbus and as accessible as possible,” Justice said in an emailed statement. “The site selected is in Columbus, with easy freeway access, and is ideal for the building needed for the new hospital.”
Although Mount Carmel West hospital is closing, that 37-acre campus is getting a $46 million makeover that will retain its 24-hour emergency department and outpatient care, as well as expand its College of Nursing and its Healthy Living Center. Among 13 themes that planners established for the West campus was to ensure access to behavioralhealth and substance-abuse treatment in Franklinton, but it was unclear how that would be provided.
Although West’s behavioral-health beds will go to the new East Side site, general hospital beds will go to Mount Carmel Grove City.
“Part of the commitment we’ve made to our patients and to the community is to assure inpatient services and care remain available and uninterrupted in the Mount Carmel system as we transform the Mount Carmel West campus to an urban health and wellness hub,” Justice said.