Mount Sinai plans to more than triple the size of its psychiatric emergency department on the Upper West Side, part of a renewed attention on building capacity for people with untreated mental illness.
The health system submitted plans to the state to renovate the current 970-square-foot unit at Mount Sinai West, a 514-bed hospital near Columbus Circle and one of Mount Sinai’s largest Manhattan facilities. The project will expand the unit to 3,600 square feet and cost approximately $8 million, according to a filing with the state Department of Health.
Comprehensive psychiatric emergency programs, known as CPEPs, equip hospitals to accept people in crisis, designed to provide immediate care for people before they are either admitted for a long-term hold or discharged. The expansion at Mount Sinai West is part of a drumbeat of projects aimed at hardening a common entry point into services for people with untreated mental illness.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has made expanding short- and long-term psychiatric beds a hallmark of her first term in the governor’s mansion. Last June, she announced a $39 million allocation to nine hospitals statewide to develop new CPEPs. Five hospitals in the city, not including Mount Sinai West, would receive $24 million to stand up new programs under the grant. Among them are Flushing Hospital Medical Center, which recently filed its own plans to add an 8-bed CPEP for roughly $8.5 million, partially funded by the state grant.
While the state has struggled to get private hospitals to restore beds for psychiatric patients who have been admitted for a longer stay, the Office of Mental Health recently announced the addition of 125 long-term beds in state-run psychiatric institutions, the largest expansion of those facilities in decades.
The latest filings came after public hospital leaders raised alarms about the impact of Mount Sinai Beth Israel’s closure in Kips Bay on nearby Bellevue Hospital, the city’s most-trafficked psychiatric emergency room. Much of a $28 million fund Mount Sinai agreed to pay to Bellevue as part of the closure plan will go towards beefing up Bellevue’s CPEP, which sees over 8,000 adult psychiatric emergencies a year.
The new renovation will expand the space available for evaluation and treatment at Mount Sinai West and add four extended-observation beds, according to the filing. The project will require the demolition of walls on the ground floor and upgrades to the facility’s HVAC, electrical and plumbing systems.
