Today, Colorado is in a state of emergency for youth mental health. Kids are coming to Children’s Hospital Colorado emergency departments at an alarming pace, and the need for care has skyrocketed.
What each child in a mental health crisis needs when they reach our emergency department—the tools, interventions, and environments that will equip each young person to recover—is very different. Consider the situations of three patients who have come to our North Campus Emergency Department. One teenager is experiencing a psychotic episode that endangers herself and those around her. She needs an emergency room environment designed with her safety and the safety of others in mind, and a rapid assessment by a specialist who understands her underlying disorder. Once she has been stabilized, she needs psychiatric inpatient care, where experts can provide care and address her symptoms.
Another young adult is having thoughts of suicide for the first time. They are not sure they feel safe enough to return home. In the short term, this patient needs a private environment in the emergency department to discuss their mental state, along with more extensive support than can be provided in the ED. They would benefit from brief, therapeutic, evidence-based interventions that allow them to safely step down to lower levels of care.
Finally, there is an adolescent who has battled depression and anxiety for years. At times, his condition can become overwhelming. When he enters the emergency department, his life is not in immediate danger, but he does not feel he has anywhere else to turn for help. In the ED, he needs a comforting environment to support him and a timely connection to longer-term community care.
How we’ll get there
Mental health crisis care is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Recognizing this, the leaders of Children’s Colorado are launching a new model across our system: one finely tuned to meet kids with the right level of care, in the right environment, at the right time. As part of this effort, the North Campus Emergency Department (ED) will be renovated to enable the delivery of healing mental health crisis services. The Children’s Colorado’s crisis team—following extensive research, benchmarking, and review— will combine the most effective models and design of spaces in crisis care, establishing an innovative, comprehensive paradigm. In addition to extensive workforce investments to implement this new care model, we will make care environment and design improvements at our North Campus to address safety and compliance considerations for the growing volume of mental health ED visits at that location.
Fundraising Goal: $650,000
By fundraising $650,000, the 2221 Society will help the North Campus’ Emergency Department revamp its mental health intake process, creating a new “Integrated Split-Flow Model. This shift requires significant, costly renovations, modifications and construction in the existing physical space. In this improved model, every patient who enters the emergency department will receive an initial mental health acuity score. Mental health patients will be placed on tracks – and provided with specially designed spaces – according to their acuity scores using an approach to care that recognizes the impact of trauma. As a result, youth will receive care that meets their specific needs. Patients in urgent distress, for example, will undergo a full crisis assessment in a room that minimizes the risk of further harm to themselves or others, while those with lower scores will be connected to more appropriate settings for their healing. With this newly designed environment and patient flow, care providers will dramatically reduce patient stays in the ED from the current average of 18 hours to a goal of one to two hours, depending on acuity, and significantly lower the return rate to the emergency department, from its current rate of 29% of mental health patients who return to the ED. Thousands of kids and families will be impacted by these upgrades; on average, the North Campus ED has more than 1,000 behavioral health patients, along with nearly 50,000 patients who come to the location for other emergencies.
