IRMC building new mental health facility
INDIANA, Pa. — Indiana Regional Medical Center will build a new mental health facility to serve Indiana County and the surrounding area, the hospital announced in a news release last week.
The facility will occupy 31,000 square feet and have 44 beds to provide care for adolescent, adult and elderly patients. IRMC expects construction to be completed near the end of 2023.
“As an independent community hospital, we understand the needs of the people we serve,” Stephen A. Wolfe, president and CEO of IRMC, was quoted in the release. “Behavioral health needs have been a critical issue for some time and only worsened due to the pandemic. Our hope is to provide care and comfort to the patients and families affected.”
The release described the Indiana County area as critically undeserved for health care and especially mental health care amid a personnel crisis in the industry. It said the local population has limited access to primary care, and many residents use emergency rooms and urgent care to meet their needs. It listed drug addiction, poverty and unemployment as unique challenges for providers who are not equipped to handle publicly funded medical assistance recipients or uninsured patients.
In 2021, according to the release, 200 Indiana County residents had to seek treatment in 23 inpatient facilities located outof-county, including as far away as Ohio.
The goal of the new facility will be to coordinate and integrate medical and physical health care. The release said behavioral health is the number-one reason for transfer from most emergency departments in the region, and the new facilities will enable patients and their families to pursue treatment closer to home, ideally reducing the cost and length of stay, as well as relaxing the burden for other hospitals struggling with mental health patient placement.
IRMC also hopes the new facility will reduce wait times in its emergency department. In the release, it said the wait time for a psychiatric patient at
IRMC went from 1.5 hours in 2009 to over 11 hours in 2021, and patients often wait multiple days for a bed.
In partnership with the Armstrong-Indiana-Clarion Drug and Alcohol Commission, Armstrong-Indiana Behavioral Heath and Development Program and Southwest Behavioral Health Management, IRMC secured a $4.8 million HealthChoices reinvestment plan approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services’ Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services to assist with construction costs.
“The communitybased mental health system has been inadequately funded for many years. There was a significant 10 percent cut in 2012 with no mental health funding increases since,” Tammy Calderone, Armstrong-Indiana Behavioral and Developmental Health program administrator, said in the release. “I am excited about the opportunity to partner with IRMC in securing funds for the development of the inpatient beds for our region. This is a much-needed service that will support residents in our communities and strengthen the existing behavioral health continuum of care.”
“I am excited to see this project come to fruition,” said Kami Anderson, executive director at Armstrong-Indiana-Clarion Drug and Alcohol Commission. “Inpatient mental health beds are very limited in Western PA, and the addition of these beds will help our area residents access quality care locally.”