Colorado once again has psychiatric beds available west of the Front Range after Vail Health opened a new inpatient facility last week.
Until recently, West Springs Hospital in Grand Junction was the only option for inpatient psychiatric treatment between metro Denver and Salt Lake City. The hospital closed in early March because of financial difficulties, though its detoxification facility and outpatient clinic remained open.
Precourt Healing Center, which sits on a campus in Edwards that also houses outpatient mental health providers and community organizations working with youth, accepted its first patients on May 5.
As of Friday afternoon, three people from across the western half of the state had started care there, said Kim Goodrich, director of behavioral health inpatient operations.
Precourt differs from West Springs in a few ways. It isn’t set up to provide detoxification care, so people who are struggling with addiction as well as a mental health condition will need to stabilize elsewhere after starting their care at Precourt, Goodrich said.
The facility also can’t treat as many patients at the same time, with 28 beds, rather than 48 at West Springs, she said.
“We fill a gap that was left by their closing, but there are smaller pieces that need to be plugged up,” she said.
Another difference is that patients can’t walk into Precourt to seek care, but need a referral from an emergency room or an agency that partners with Vail Health. West Springs operated a psychiatric emergency room that could admit patients directly.
Vail Health designed Precourt to treat patients holistically, with healthy meals, exercise options and complementary therapies, such as art and music, as well as traditional one-on-one or group therapy, said Dr. Teresa Haynes, director of inpatient behavioral health.
The goal is to allow people to use different parts of their brains to work through their crises, and to give them some tools to manage their mental health when they go home, she said.
“Individuals who are in this level of crisis… don’t necessarily want to talk about their story all day, every day,” she said.
Precourt also uses remote monitoring technology to avoid disrupting patients’ sleep to check that they’re safe overnight, Goodrich said. The system uses infrared light to see if the person is in their bed and to check that they’re breathing, without showing a clear image that would invade their privacy, she said. Psychiatric hospitals check patients frequently at all hours to ensure they haven’t harmed themselves.
Most people will probably stay three to five days before transitioning to outpatient care, Goodrich said.
“It’s taking that immediate, acute crisis, stabilizing, getting the resources around them and getting them back in the community,” she said.
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