Franklin County's new 24/7 Crisis Care Center will open this summer, providing mental health and addiction care to relieve pressure on area emergency rooms.
The $60 million facility is equipped with a 23-hour observation unit and urgent care capabilities. Parts of the building, including inpatient rooms for people to stay 24 hours or longer will open in 2027.
The Alcohol Drug and Mental Health Board of Franklin County is helping facilitate the project while nonprofit Recovery Innovations will provide services once it opens. The Franklinton facility, located at 465 Harmon Ave., can treat up to 80 people at one time and 34,000 people every year once it is fully open.
Recovery Innovations Chief Medical Officer Chuck Browning told reporters Monday that the facility is designed to help people experiencing mental health and drug addiction crises get help immediately.
"The main line of what we do in crisis services is to be able to create a 'no wrong door' and say 'yes' to everyone that comes in," Browning said. "So often people that are in crisis end up in going to jail, not getting care, being afraid to go get care, or going to an emergency department and waiting for a long time."
The building will open in phases, with the first part happening this summer. The two 23-hour observation units, or retreats, will each have a 20-person capacity to offer short-term stabilization and intensive observation for up to 23 hours.
The first phase also includes discharge pharmacy services available to guests.
Johnathan Thomas, chief operating officer at ADAMH of Franklin County, said this section doesn't go beyond 23 hours because of licensure issues. He said once someone stays beyond 23 hours, they're classified as an overnight guest and need to be under a different level of care.
That second level of care are the inpatient rooms, which are set to open in 2027 in the third phase.
Phase two, which happens in 2026, will include the urgent care section and a family resource center opening.
Thomas said the facility will help increase Franklin County's capacity to treat individuals for mental health and substance use-disorder who are in crisis.
"Depending on length of stay, that could be anywhere from 95 to 100 individuals receiving care in a day. The total capacity of this facility is over 34,500 encounters a year, which exceeds today's current full demand for adults in our community," Thomas said.
Thomas said before the COVID-19 pandemic, the peak capacity in Franklin County for the short-term 23-hour observation was only at 17. He said a facility like this being able to treat more people at once increases the availability of this type of resource enormously.
Thomas said this will also relieve strain on emergency departments, which he said is not always the best place for a person in crisis to be treated. He said right now more than 70% of behavioral health emergency crises are going into emergency departments.
"And emergency departments are designed to do lots of things and they do many of those things very well. They're just not optimal locations for someone experiencing a mental health or substance use-related crisis," Thomas said.
Joy Brunson-Nsubuga, chief operating officer at Recovery Innovations, said having facilities like this that are funded by public funds and operated by nonprofits are important to have in the community. She said that is especially important to equity in the community.
"Anyone who comes, whether they walk in, they get referred here, they're brought here by first responders, they're gonna get that same level of care that anyone would get," Brunson-Nsubuga said.
Brunson-Nsubuga said they will be tracking their patients internally to make sure they are reaching all members of the community regarding treatment.
