AppHealth Behavioral Health Hospital Tour – Facility Overview

AppHealth Behavioral Health Hospital Tour – Facility Overview

i am going to take you on a tour today of three distinct areas within this hospital area one is our admission suite and admissions area and i’m going to talk to you a little bit about why we designed it the way we did second area will be a residential space and third area is our treatment mall environment the treatment and the type of treatment that we do at this facility is something that we’ve gotten regular accolades from joint commission about and we’ve taken that foundation and expanded it significantly to support this expansion you are in the main entrance so that is our first safety component so safety component number one is there’s only one point of entrance and there’s only one way to exit we will obviously have airport security scanners and things like that all of the things that we know and we’re used to in the world of behavioral health but what sets this facility apart is that we have specifically designed it so that we can accept self presentations patients can walk in and request assessment to ask access care on their own we know that in the state of north carolina the traditional way almost the only way to access inpatient mental health services is via an emergency department that creates a significant strain on our emergency departments but more importantly it is not the experience that we want for our patients so they have to go and present in an environment that is not the expert in the type of care that they need they tell their story they’re placed one-to-one they’re on hold awaiting a bed um it’s just the least appropriate location for people to access care and in a rural setting like ours hours patients are often incredibly hesitant to go through an emergency department because our communities are small and everyone knows each other so you don’t want to have to tell your story four times and you don’t want everyone that your kid goes to school with or that you go to church with to know what you’re dealing with so creating this self-presentation option maintains that sense of dignity it connects the patients to the experts immediately we will be able to assess medical clearance here so we will be doing the assessment the lab work we will have our crisis team we have an internal crisis team do a clinical behavioral health assessment to determine determine most appropriate course of care if that human being needs inpatient treatment services we will medically clear them and we will admit them directly upstairs if they really need help but not necessarily rising to the level yet of inpatient services then we will connect them with outpatient services do discharge planning and all of those services that we currently render in our own emergency departments right now 60 of the human beings that present for help in our eds end up being discharged to outpatient follow-up but they come to us because they don’t know how to navigate the system they don’t know how to access care so we become a conduit of that and we anticipate that that will stay about the same even with this facility and this option we’re just going to have more bed availability in the region