City Council Approves Half-Million for Psychiatric ER Center

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Friday, October 16, 2015

GoLocalPDX News Team

The Portland City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to give a half-million dollars to the Unity Center for Behavioral Health, a regional psychiatric ER center.

Design work has already begun on the center, which is set to open in late 2016, according to Legacy Health. It will be run by Legacy health, Oregon Health and Science University Hospital, Kaiser Permanente and Adventist Health, who signed a joint operating agreement earlier this year.

The project, which aims to turn Legacy Health’s Holladay Park building into a 101-bed mental health center equipped with a 24-hour hour psychiatric emergency room, is estimated to cost $50 million. 70 beds will be reserved for adults while 22 will be marked for adolescents. Portland currently 90 mental health inpatient beds for adults and 16 for adolescents.

Multnomah County has already pledged $3 million for the center, while Clackamas and Washington Counties donated $250,000 and $200,000 respectively. The project has also received private donations.

The center is designed to receive patients who have encounters have had with the police. Rather than being transported to a health center by the police, ambulances with emergency medical personnel will transport people in mental health crisis to the hospital and perform a expedited assessment to determine whether the patient should be sent to the Unity Center or a conventional medical facility.

Patients will be connected with a community-based mental health provider for follow-up appointments and paired with peers who have also gone through mental health crisis before being discharged.

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