Memorial Hermann Opens Third Mental Health Crisis Clinic
Katy, TX (February 1, 2016) Memorial Hermann, continuing its effort to help close the behavioral and mental health resource gap in the greater Houston region, recently opened its third and most centrally located Mental Health Crisis Clinic.
The new clinic at 4850 West Bellfort, is located in Meyerland’s Meyer Park Shopping Center and joins two other Memorial Hermann Mental Health Crisis Clinics located in Humble and Spring Branch.
“Our strategy in determining where to locate our clinics is based on opening access points to people in need of mental healthcare services throughout the Houston/Harris County region,” said Theresa Fawvor, Associate Vice President of Behavioral Health Services for Memorial Hermann. “We realize the need for mental health services in our community is great, and we’re trying to address this underserved need with our clinics.
“We expect the Meyerland location to serve a large population with its proximity to southeast, southwest, and central parts of Houston,” Fawvor continued, adding that the location is in close proximity to Memorial Hermann – Texas Medical Center, Memorial Hermann Southwest, and Memorial Hermann Sugar Land hospitals. “Anyone with a mental health need, whether they are insured or uninsured, is welcome to visit our crisis clinics.”
The clinic is staffed with a psychiatrist, nurse practitioner, social worker, and other patient care personnel. With the clinic’s focus being on non-traditional access to a psychiatric, multi-disciplinary team, its operating days and hours are Monday-Friday, 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.
In 2015, the Memorial Herman Psychiatric Response Team performed more than 8,170 consultations at all Memorial Hermann locations and more than 6,200 in 2014. The evaluations found increasingly complicated co-occurring medical and psychiatric disorders, few available inpatient psychiatric beds, even fewer inpatient options to treat complex co-occurring disorders, and limited outpatient services to meet patient needs.
The Meyer Park location, like the other clinics, is designed to fill these unmet needs by providing rapid access to initial psychiatric treatment and outpatient multi-disciplinary services to patients with no immediate access to mental health care.
“Many people with mental health needs are all too often confined to the Harris County jail, so key goals of the crisis clinics are to keep individuals healthy and safe, develop processes and interventions to manage challenging behaviors, and to reduce improper hospitalization or incarceration,” added Fawvor.
Services provided by the Mental Health Crisis Clinic can include, but are not limited to:
- Multiple psychosocial assessments and medical history assessments
- Emergency medication administration
- Short-term prescriptions
- Connecting the patient to a more permanent medical home and outpatient psychiatric treatment
- Social services
“We want our clinics to be an additional resource in the community that will direct people to the appropriate setting and level of care,” Fawvor said. “Those in need of care can literally walk in and have immediate access to psychiatric providers and clinical social workers prepared to serve them if they or a family member are experiencing a mental health crisis.”
Memorial Hermann used years of data from the System’s emergency rooms, as well as useful input from law enforcement, personal care homes, consumer representatives, other area psychiatric hospitals, and public and private community behavioral health services providers to identify locations for its clinics. With the third clinic now open, Memorial Hermann is able to provide around-the-clock access to mental health services.
The Crisis Clinic initiative is one of nine Memorial Hermann-sponsored Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) projects aimed at transforming health care. Overall, DSRIP goals include better care for individuals, better health for the population, and lower cost through process improvement.
Memorial Hermann is part of Region 3’s Southest Texas Regional Healthcare Partnership anchored by Harris Health System, and includes Austin, Calhoun, Chambers, Colorado, Fort Bend, Harris, Matagorda, Waller, and Wharton counties.
In addition to the Crisis Clinics, the other Memorial Hermann DSRIP projects addressing the gap in the mental and behavioral health care services include Psychiatric Response Case Management and Psychiatric Home Health Services.
For more information call 713.338.MHCC (6422) or email: askmhcc@memorialhermann.org.
