Columbus hospital expands mental health care with new geriatric psychiatry unit
After years of delays, St. Francis-Emory Hospital has unveiled its new Geriatric Psychiatry Unit, which will treat older residents in Columbus and surrounding areas who experiencing a mental health crisis.
The 16-bed unit provides short-term acute crisis care, said Brittany Luther-Jones, executive director at the Bradley Center — the behavioral health facility for St. Francis-Emory. Patients will receive a diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation in the unit.
“We’re here to help people get through those very difficult crisis situations and help them return to their communities as quickly as possible,” Luther-Jones said.
An average stay for patients in the unit will typically be between 7 to 10 days, she said. The length of stay will depend on how patients respond to treatment and how quickly they begin to recover.
Nurses who will work in the unit will have the capability of treating patients’ medical and psychiatric needs, said Emilee Roland, the nurse manager for the geriatric psychiatric unit.
“We’ve got a wealth of knowledge and different backgrounds of nurses that have medical backgrounds as well as psychiatric backgrounds,” she said.
Medical professionals in the unit will better be able to tailor treatment to the medical needs of each patient, Roland said.
20% of older Americans have mental health issues
About one-fifth of Americans over 55 experience mental health challenges, including anxiety, severe cognitive impairment and mood disorders such as depression, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Every detail of the unit at St. Francis-Emory was designed with the safety of the patients in mind, said Geriatric Medical Director Dr. Iveta Boyanchek.
The bathroom doors in each room are padded and are held up magnetically. The shape of the door handles were designed so that nothing can be wrapped around them. The ceilings in certain areas are solid instead of the standard tile ceilings to ensure patients’ safety, she said, and even the flooring was chosen to minimize incidents.
Most of the rooms have two beds, Boyanchek said, but there are single-bed rooms for patients who need it. There is a room for physical therapy. Occupational therapy will also be provided, Roland said. The unit also contains a conference room, offices for Boyanchek and nurse practitioners and a dining room.
The geriatric psychiatry unit will begin receiving patients within the week, Luther-Jones said. It became available for crisis situations as of Oct. 18. The intake department is open 24 hours a day every day, she said.
Caring for the aging population is fulfilling to Roland because of the engagement she is able to have with people, Roland said.
“These patients come with a wealth of life that comes behind them,” she said. “So, you’ve got these folks that can sit down and actively talk to you and tell you their life history. It’s great.”
Region’s only geriatric psychiatry unit
Since Luther-Jones joined the Bradley Center 13 years ago, both the center and Columbus have grown. After an analysis, leadership at the Bradley Center realized the need for geriatric psychiatry was going to continue to increase. Solving this problem became a priority for St. Francis-Emory and the Bradley Center, she said.
Although the fact that the community was growing and aging was a good problem to have, Luther-Jones said, it was an intimidating problem to address.
“These are individuals who are our church members, our school members and our loved ones,” she said. “They have care needs that are unmet, so we had a team of individuals that have been working here for a long time.”
The geriatric psychiatry unit is a way to fill this gap in health care, she said. It will be the only one of its kind in the region, Boyanchek said.
The closest geriatric psychiatry units are in Eufaula, Ala., and in the Atlanta-metro area, Boyanchek said, which makes the unit at St. Francis-Emory important to Columbus as well as to surrounding towns and counties.
Bringing the unit to St. Francis-Emory was a long-term project, she said. Boyanchek was hired to lead the unit in October 2013 after a recruiter contacted her looking for a geriatric psychiatrist to come to Columbus.
“There were times when I felt it was never going to happen,” Boyanchek said.
When she first came to the city, Boyanchek was given a tour of the facility that would be the geriatric psychiatry unit and was told it would be ready the next year. That was nine years ago, Boyanchek said, and there were a lot of challenges as team members of St. Francis-Emory and the Bradley Center collaborated to get the unit open.
“After about nine years of waiting, we are very excited to have this place for our older population,” Boyanchek said.
