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Mental Health Facility Planned Possible Site Of Inpatient Mental Health Facility

Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, PA) - 5/2/2016

The county's largest health care facility wants to locate a new inpatient mental health facility at Lancaster city's northwestern edge.

Lancaster General Health is looking at building a one-story, 126-bed psychiatric facility north of Harrisburg Avenue, behind shops at the West Liberty Street intersection.

The new facility would help address serious gaps in the local behavioral health care system, officials said. They are also hoping to make it the county's first provider of inpatient behavioral health services for adolescents.

Currently, the system is forced to send patients elsewhere nearly 60 percent of the time because the existing 36-bed inpatient unit at Lancaster General Hospital is full.

In those cases, officials said, they first seek openings with local partners like Philhaven, but often those too are at capacity and patients end up in facilities as far away as Baltimore.

"We were hearing from employers in the community, citizens in the community, and we saw ourselves, every day in our emergency room, people coming to us seeking treatment that we could not accommodate," said Stacey Youcis, LG Health's senior vice president for population health.

The facility would offer inpatient, outpatient and day-treatment programs; a unit for patients diagnosed with both psychiatric illness and substance-abuse disorder; an older-adult unit; and a women's trauma unit.

LG Health plans to continue working with other local behavioral health care providers.

Finding trained professionals

LG Health officials said the building will be the easy part. The hard part will be recruiting the additional behavioral health care professionals, who are in short supply nationwide.

That's why LG Health wants to partner with a national provider of behavioral health services.

Spokesman John Lines said the system has identified an unnamed prospective partner and hopes to finalize an agreement in the next few months.

Until that happens, he said, it's too early for LG Health to publicly estimate the cost of the project or start submitting plans.

However, he said, the system has started talking to officials and neighbors about the idea.

"We want collaboration and input from the community," he said. "If all goes well, we're hoping to open sometime in 2018."

Location

LG Health is considering a site on what's known as the Northwest Gateway tract along Harrisburg Avenue.

Formerly Norfolk Southern rail yards and part of the old Armstrong World Industries site, the land is now grassy fields thanks to the most ambitious redevelopment project in the city's history, which was largely financed by public funds.

LG Health and Franklin & Marshall College, which jointly led the decadelong project, both invested millions and are splitting the acreage. The college recently secured approval to build a new football stadium on its part.

Lines said LG Health thinks the proposed facility would take about 12 of its 20 acres, and that there is not yet a plan for the remainder, which includes frontage along Harrisburg Avenue.

The building would be behind CVS on the newly extended part of College Avenue, he said, noting that the nonprofit health system would plan to pay Lancaster city and School District of Lancaster property taxes on it.

N. Prince St. Clipper Magazine Stadium

Potential location of new Lancaster General Health behavioral health center CVS Pharmacy College Ave.

Credit: HSTAUFFER@LNPNEWS.COM