San Diego County officials unveiled plans today for a proposed $210 million behavioral health campus in the Midway neighborhood aimed at preventing patients from winding up in an emergency room or living on the street.
According to Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer's office, the proposed Behavioral Health Wellness Campus "will serve as the region's `Care Before Crisis hub,"' and replace "fragmented, emergency-driven responses with a connected continuum of treatment that reduces ER overuse, prevents homelessness and improves public safety."
During a Tuesday news conference in front of the county Psychiatric Hospital and the old Rosecrans Health Services Complex on Rosecrans Street, Lawson-Remer said the campus "will be a place where people can find care, stability and dignity under one roof."
Standing next to a rendering of the facility, Lawson-Remer said the goal is to have a place that ensures "nobody has to start over."
After securing the needed dollars, the county will work with community partners to make sure the campus becomes a reality, Lawson-Remer said.
For too long, the health care system asked "people to fend for themselves," said Lawson-Remer, board chair. A new facility, she added, "is simply the right and moral thing to do."
In statement Tuesday afternoon, Lawson-Remer said "the whole-person care campus in one location will be a model for other counties in California" and could serve more than 20,000 San Diegans annually, including veterans, working-age adults and those adults in the judicial system.
The new campus would feature five "state-of-the-art facilities" that will reflect "what we can achieve when we all work together," said Nadia Privara Brahms, acting director of county Behavioral Health Services.
Brahms said the campus would include a crisis stabilization unit; a secured mental health rehabilitation center; a social rehabilitation facility offering intensive, short-term and peer-based support for those ready to be discharged; a substance abuse center with lodging; and an out-patient clinic.
She added the campus would support people receiving treatment under state policies such as Senate Bill 43, which expands the definition of "gravely disabled" in terms of who can be involuntarily held in facilities and receive treatment; and the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Act, which focuses on people with untreated serious mental illness.
Other features would include 125 treatment beds and vocational opportunities, Brahms said.
The Board of Supervisors voted Oct. 21 to apply to the state for a $100 million grant to build the Wellness Campus, with county money paying for the remaining facility costs, Lawson-Remer said.
Lawson-Remer told City News Service that if the state grant doesn't come through, "I would never say that something like this would be at the end of its possibilities because one door closed. But I would say, I could not tell you right now what plan B would be if we don't get the grant."
Dr. Steve Koh, a UC San Diego psychiatrist, said during the Tuesday news conference that the proposed Wellness Center would represent an "evolutionary process."
When someone suffering a mental health crisis is stabilized in an emergency room, that person may not reach an after-care facility, said Koh, who serves as an associate chief medical officer for the county Behavioral Health Department.
Koh added the new campus "is going to try and fix that."
County resident Anita Fisher, whose son has lived with a serious mental health illness and experienced substance abuse disorder, said she was "happy to speak for families like ours, whose loved ones fall between the cracks."
Those transitioning out of crisis care who are seriously mentally ill can end up homeless, in jail or abusing drugs "instead of receiving the help they need," said Fisher, who retired from the National Alliance on Mental Illness San Diego, and volunteers in related activities.
She noted that her son had been in the Rosecrans facility on many occasions, and with multiple referrals.
Fisher added she was hopeful that the campus will come to fruition to help not only her son, but "many families throughout the county."
