Patients seeking psychiatric treatment sometimes had to wait days in Chesapeake Regional Medical Center’s emergency room for space at facilities across the state to open up, the hospital told the state in 2022.
Now those patients will have their own space on-site dedicated to treating them quickly.
“For far too long, individuals in this region experiencing a mental health crisis have had limited access to focused, immediate and respectful care. Today, that changes,” Amber Egyud, Chesapeake Regionals’ chief operating and nursing officer, said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday for the hospital's new psychiatric emergency room.
The room will allow those in need of psychiatric care to get away from the stress of a typical ER and connect directly with appropriate clinical staff.
The first psychiatric emergency room on the south side of Hampton Roads, the effort was partially funded by a competitive $3.7 million state grant and is part of a larger psychiatric emergency program from the hospital.
The ER will start accepting patients in the next few weeks, once the finishing touches are complete. For those who can’t be treated and immediately released in the ER, the hospital plans to open an additional inpatient facility with 20 beds early next year.
The emergency department should reduce the need for police officers to monitor patients, said Chesapeake Police Chief Mark Solesky.
He said it’s not unusual for six or seven police cruisers to be parked at the hospital on any given night, with officers each tending to a different patient. The new ER will require just one officer.
Solesky said the facility “is going to go a long way towards freeing up our officers to go back out to their core services.”
