New facility on ECMC Health Campus consolidates
services
BUFFALO, NY – June 18, 2012 – Great Lakes Health today announced that New York’s Health
Department approved a $15 million grant to help Erie County Medical Center and
Kaleida Health consolidate mental health and drug dependency treatment in one $25
million Regional Behavioral Health Center of Excellence (COE) at ECMC.
The new center, announced as
a concept Feb. 13, 2012, is a physician-driven collaboration between ECMC and
Kaleida. It will create a state-of-the-art, comprehensive psychiatric emergency
program and new inpatient facilities to serve mental health patients in the
Western New York community.
“The HEAL-NY grant will help
us create a Center of Excellence for Behavioral Health on the ECMC Health
Campus, create a new and improved facility for the Comprehensive Psychiatric
Emergency Program (CPEP), and continue our collaborative relationship for the
good of our patients,” said Kaleida President and CEO James R. Kaskie. “Collaboration
creates synergies and synergies get things done.”
“This is another tangible
example of leveraging the talents, infrastructure, clinical expertise of both
ECMC and Kaleida to benefit our community and the patients we serve,” he added.
The consolidated model will
combine the resources of the ECMC and Buffalo General Medical Center behavioral
health programs and will create a single, 180-bed inpatient psychiatric program.
It will also continue ECMC’s current 22 detoxification beds and 20 inpatient
chemical dependency rehabilitation beds.
The plan also calls for
continuing ECMC’s and Kaleida’s Main Street outpatient clinics, along with
clinics in Lancaster and North Buffalo. The state’s Healthcare Efficiency and
Affordability Law-21 [HEAL-NY] funding significantly moves the project forward.
ECMC Corp. and Kaleida Health
will fund the remaining $10 million. The new center, planned to open in March
2014, would expand ECMC’s current emergency behavioral health facilities from
6,500 square feet to 16,000 square feet.
“This center provides an
opportunity to develop better quality, consolidated programs of emergency,
outpatient, and inpatient services with one focus: the patients,” said ECMC CEO
Jody L. Lomeo. “It will be state-of-the-art, and will deliver the care the
mentally ill in our community deserve. That care will improve by having all our
collective expert physicians and staff in one place and this is another example
of the success of Great Lakes Health.”
Mental health care in
Western New York, like the rest of the state, is fragmented and costly to the
state’s Medicaid payment system. In the last 20 years, the Buffalo Psychiatric
Center went from 1,200 beds to 160 and the Gowanda Psychiatric and West Seneca
Developmental centers closed.
Other inpatient facilities
downsized or closed in recent years and while outpatient services exist, there
is a lack of coordination among community providers. Psychiatrists are also in
short supply throughout the region.
This combination of factors created
a crisis for mental health patients and their families in Western New York.
Mentally ill and chemically dependent patients in crisis are, many times,
forced to find care in crowded hospital emergency rooms, which leads to more
costly episodic inpatient care and unsafe conditions for clinical staff.Dr
Dr.
Yogesh Bakhai, ECMC Chief of Service of Psychiatry and Dr. Maria Cartegena, medical
director, Buffalo General's Department of Inpatient Behavioral Health &
Psychiatry, will lead this initiative.
“The region has needed a
Center of Excellence in Behavioral Health for years,” said Dr. Bakhai. “Not
only do we need to expand our facilities to meet the growing demand, we need to
bring together the talents of the region to focus on creating a better model
for our patients.”
“This project is solely
about the needs of patients,” said Dr. Cartagena. “We recognize that creating
exceptional quality care for our patients is not necessarily about a particular
location, but about the dedication and expertise of the treatment team.”
“As a regional center for
psychiatric care, ECMC has the facility and the room to expand our
comprehensive services. Additionally, this would allow us to bring the
expertise of our physicians and staff together with ECMC's experienced
physicians and staff to create a true collaborative effort. The development of
a center of excellence in psychiatry would most definitely improve the quality
of care for behavioral health patients for generations to come.”
The integrated model will
combine the current outpatient volumes of 44,300 annual visits at ECMC and Kaleida’s 68,829 annual
visits with services provided onsite at ECMC and at its community-based
locations.
Currently, ECMC has 132
licensed inpatient psychiatric beds with 2,297 discharges in 2011 and 57
inpatient rehabilitation/detoxification beds with 1,621 discharges in 2011. Buffalo
General Medical Center has 91 licensed
inpatient beds with 2,307 annual discharges.
This consolidation
represents the third major initiative of Great Lakes Health System to merge the
services of ECMC and Kaleida. The first created the Gates Vascular Institute on
the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus in collaboration with the University at
Buffalo and the second being the Regional Center of Excellence for
Transplantation & Kidney Care on ECMC’s campus, both HEAL-funded
initiatives to restructure and right size the region’s health care.
