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Santa Clara County unveils plans for a $233M psychiatric hospital serving kids and adults

Santa Clara County is looking to build a new psychiatric facility serving children and teens. Rendering courtesy Santa Clara County.

In a bid to create desperately needed psychiatric hospital beds for children and teens in crisis, Santa Clara County officials last week unveiled plans to build a new state-of-the-art facility right in the heart of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

The 77-bed hospital building, which is expected to cost $233 million and finish construction by the end of 2023, would consolidate emergency psychiatric services and inpatient care for those suffering from mental illness across all ages. The design carves out one unit specifically for adolescent youth ages 13 to 17, and another for children age 12 and younger.

If built, the facility would fill a significant gap in mental health care that has plagued Santa Clara County for years. With a dearth of psychiatric beds in the region, teens and young children who are faced with a mental health crisis are frequently forced to travel long distances in order to receive care. Families are sent as far as Sacramento or Bakersfield in order to find an inpatient psychiatric bed for their child, making a difficult experience even worse.

Hundreds of kids in Santa Clara County are admitted to psychiatric hospitals each year, almost all of whom must seek care beyond the county line. Limited beds are available for teens in South San Jose, but none are available for children age 12 and younger.

The proposed 190,000-square-foot hospital building has two 21-bed units for adults on a separate floor from the adolescent and child units, with special attention to ensure adult and child patients never cross paths. The building will have a bridge connecting to the emergency department as well as space devoted to mental health urgent care, relocating most mental health services spread out across the Valley Medical Center (VMC) campus.

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The pediatric unit includes so-called "med-psych" beds, available for patients who need both medical and psychiatric treatment at the same time. No such beds are currently available anywhere in the Bay Area.

County Supervisor Joe Simitian, a long-time advocate for a youth psychiatric hospital, said in a statement that children suffering from mental health crises should be able to receive treatment in their own community rather than being forced to travel to Vallejo, Concord, Santa Rosa and Sacramento for care.

"On any given day, more than a dozen Santa Clara County children are being hospitalized for psychiatric emergencies outside the County," Simitian said. "Separating these kids from their families at one of the toughest times in their lives, that's just hell on them."

Teens needing inpatient psychiatric care will have separate rooms in an area cordoned off from adult patients. Rendering courtesy Santa Clara County.

Though Santa Clara County has a statewide reputation as a progressive leader in mental health care, the lack of hospital beds has been a nagging problem that county officials have been trying to solve for close to a decade. Previous efforts to create an adolescent psychiatric unit go back to at least 2011, each time with the county asking outside agencies to bear the high cost of building and operating such a facility.

The breakthrough finally came in 2018, when county supervisors agreed that Santa Clara County -- not a private hospital or outside health care provider -- should take the lead with its own new facility. The future facility is expected to take patients referred from Kaiser, El Camino Hospital and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, none of which have inpatient psychiatric services for children, and will accept those with and without insurance.

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While serving children and teens was the goal, the new facility will serve mostly adults and have a full complement of adult psychiatric services. According to staff, the existing psychiatric buildings at Valley Medical Center are in poor condition and have serious design flaws that are not ideal for patients and pose a security risk, including "blind" hallways and features that are not fixed to the floor.

The Barbara Arons Pavilion, where staff report being frequently assaulted by patients, was built in the 1980s and still has mostly shared rooms, which is no longer the norm for psychiatric facilities. The newly designed hospital building would replace the pavilion.

Kevin Forestieri
Kevin Forestieri is an assistant editor with the Mountain View Voice and The Almanac. He joined the Voice in 2014 and has reported on schools, housing, crime and health. Read more >>

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Santa Clara County unveils plans for a $233M psychiatric hospital serving kids and adults

by / Mountain View Voice

Uploaded: Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 1:33 pm

In a bid to create desperately needed psychiatric hospital beds for children and teens in crisis, Santa Clara County officials last week unveiled plans to build a new state-of-the-art facility right in the heart of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

The 77-bed hospital building, which is expected to cost $233 million and finish construction by the end of 2023, would consolidate emergency psychiatric services and inpatient care for those suffering from mental illness across all ages. The design carves out one unit specifically for adolescent youth ages 13 to 17, and another for children age 12 and younger.

If built, the facility would fill a significant gap in mental health care that has plagued Santa Clara County for years. With a dearth of psychiatric beds in the region, teens and young children who are faced with a mental health crisis are frequently forced to travel long distances in order to receive care. Families are sent as far as Sacramento or Bakersfield in order to find an inpatient psychiatric bed for their child, making a difficult experience even worse.

Hundreds of kids in Santa Clara County are admitted to psychiatric hospitals each year, almost all of whom must seek care beyond the county line. Limited beds are available for teens in South San Jose, but none are available for children age 12 and younger.

The proposed 190,000-square-foot hospital building has two 21-bed units for adults on a separate floor from the adolescent and child units, with special attention to ensure adult and child patients never cross paths. The building will have a bridge connecting to the emergency department as well as space devoted to mental health urgent care, relocating most mental health services spread out across the Valley Medical Center (VMC) campus.

The pediatric unit includes so-called "med-psych" beds, available for patients who need both medical and psychiatric treatment at the same time. No such beds are currently available anywhere in the Bay Area.

County Supervisor Joe Simitian, a long-time advocate for a youth psychiatric hospital, said in a statement that children suffering from mental health crises should be able to receive treatment in their own community rather than being forced to travel to Vallejo, Concord, Santa Rosa and Sacramento for care.

"On any given day, more than a dozen Santa Clara County children are being hospitalized for psychiatric emergencies outside the County," Simitian said. "Separating these kids from their families at one of the toughest times in their lives, that's just hell on them."

Though Santa Clara County has a statewide reputation as a progressive leader in mental health care, the lack of hospital beds has been a nagging problem that county officials have been trying to solve for close to a decade. Previous efforts to create an adolescent psychiatric unit go back to at least 2011, each time with the county asking outside agencies to bear the high cost of building and operating such a facility.

The breakthrough finally came in 2018, when county supervisors agreed that Santa Clara County -- not a private hospital or outside health care provider -- should take the lead with its own new facility. The future facility is expected to take patients referred from Kaiser, El Camino Hospital and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, none of which have inpatient psychiatric services for children, and will accept those with and without insurance.

While serving children and teens was the goal, the new facility will serve mostly adults and have a full complement of adult psychiatric services. According to staff, the existing psychiatric buildings at Valley Medical Center are in poor condition and have serious design flaws that are not ideal for patients and pose a security risk, including "blind" hallways and features that are not fixed to the floor.

The Barbara Arons Pavilion, where staff report being frequently assaulted by patients, was built in the 1980s and still has mostly shared rooms, which is no longer the norm for psychiatric facilities. The newly designed hospital building would replace the pavilion.

Comments

JustAWorkingStiff
Registered user
Another Mountain View Neighborhood
on Feb 23, 2021 at 2:46 pm
JustAWorkingStiff, Another Mountain View Neighborhood
Registered user
on Feb 23, 2021 at 2:46 pm

We once had a psychiatric hospital here in Santa Clara County
Web Link

This was near Lafayette and Montague Expressway
It is now occupied by the Oracle Campus, lots of tract homes, a shopping center.
The Administrative Buildings live on as a National Park to preserve the historical
architecture. Security personnel have reported ghostly behavior but I've never seen any. The original conversion took place in late 1990s early 2000 when this became Sun Microsystem's flagship campus and the administrative buildings became corporate HQ for a little while before shifting back to Menlo Park.

So what is the purpose of this story?
1. Psychiatric Hospitals are needed
2. A long time ago we had substantial resources devoted to this
3. If you interview homeless, you will see a mix of issues. One of them, which
will comprise a substantial % of the many issues, will be mental illness.
4. Until we get this Mental Illness issue addressed with adequate resources, we
will be chasing our tails and spending $Billions with no results.
5. There are well intentioned people who advocate letting homeless just camp where ever they want or just putting them in hotels and there should not be any interviews to evaluate mental stability. I think if we let these well intentioned advocates continue on this path there will be no progress.
6. We need to restart psychiatric hospital programs.



RandomNimby
Registered user
Blossom Valley
on Feb 24, 2021 at 3:08 pm
RandomNimby, Blossom Valley
Registered user
on Feb 24, 2021 at 3:08 pm

JustAWorkingStiff: I agree that mental health services tackle many problems at the source of homelessness that housing alone does not. And yes, housing resources are likely inefficiently utilized when mental health needs continue to be neglected. I just would not want your argument construed to suggest that efforts to get people housed should be on hold “Until we get this Mental Illness issue addressed with adequate resources.” That would be like arguing that people should first be discharged in good condition from hospitals before wasting resources feeding them. They are not sequential needs. They are parallel.

Housing instability is both a result AND a cause of mental illness. While complete success will not be achieved until mental health is adequately addressed, housing should not be delayed waiting for that ideal world to arrive. That battle is continual. Housing people, even with mental illness, is not “no results”, and mental health screening should be towards referring for help, not eliminating from housing.

We aren’t treating homelessness or illness. We are treating people. You may not have intended to say otherwise, but because that is often where politics goes, I wanted to emphasize the point.

- professional mental health worker


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