Community Behavioral Health Center Expansion

Community Behavioral Health Center Expansion

there is a huge need to help those who struggle with mental health in our community that’s why the staff at the community behavioral health center is making more services available we sat down with psychologist Rick Adams to talk about their recent 12-bed expansion and plans for the future tell us about your Center sure this is a inpatient psychiatric hospital really that’s associated with community Regional Medical Center we currently have 73 beds it’s all for adults and I should mention the 73 is the recent expansion over 61 which we’ve had since inception so it’s adults with its severe or serious mental illness when did you get those 12 beds and how did that help your hospital okay the 12 beds open four weeks ago and interestingly they’re pretty close to full all the time now so it really did bring in a lot more of the people that need service so it helped our hospital but a lot of what it does is two things come to mind immediately folks that are in crisis end up in emergency departments around the area and also at crisis centers if we don’t have beds then it takes longer for them to get a place for treatment and also they’re gonna linger in an environment that isn’t providing treatment that’s just holding them there is actual aerial data that I’ve been to conferences and it’s discussed how many psychiatric beds are needed per 100,000 population and Fresno is severely low compared to basically national agencies numbers but even compared to other large metropolitan areas in California so let’s talk about the good news here which is you guys are expanding and expanding pretty largely here right yes we just opened the twelve beds that I mentioned and we’re filling them quickly within a month and in addition to that we are beginning the planning and we’re meeting every week to put together an actual edition that’s larger could eventually have room for up to 36 inpatient psychiatric beds but initially what we’re looking at is opening a teen beds timeframe as I understand it’s about two years thank you very much for your time doctor you

Learn about how the Community Behavioral Health Center is expanding to help meet the mental health care needs of those in the Central Valley of California.