{"id":32625,"date":"2017-09-19T12:49:49","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T16:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthcaredesi.wpengine.com\/?p=32625"},"modified":"2023-07-17T14:59:15","modified_gmt":"2023-07-17T18:59:15","slug":"safe-haven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthcaredesignmagazine.com\/projects\/safe-haven\/","title":{"rendered":"Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia Creates Safe Haven For Behavioral Health Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several years ago, Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia<\/a> (CHOP) noticed an increasing number of patients seeking medical treatment who also had behavioral health conditions, such as children exhibiting suicidal or other self-harm tendencies or who fall on the autism spectrum.<\/p>\n

To address these comorbidities, modifications were made to the 546-bed hospital, such as adding antiligature and other safety features to patient rooms and training more staff to handle kids in crisis.<\/p>\n

It was a step in the right direction, but it didn\u2019t answer the fact that patients were often scattered throughout the hospital, with staff and equipment brought to them on an as-needed basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were attempting to provide high-quality behavioral health support, essentially throughout the entire enterprise, and that created some significant challenges for doing that as well as we would have liked, and as consistently,\u201d says Doug Carney, senior vice president of facilities at CHOP.<\/p>\n

Additionally, without an inpatient unit dedicated to the specific needs of such patients, behavioral health treatments often had to be delayed until they were released from the hospital, says Natalie Miovski Hagerty, director of facilities planning at CHOP.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed to be able to look at our kids more holistically,\u201d she says. \u201cYes, we\u2019re a medical hospital, but we should be able to maintain and, if possible, help improve the underlying behavioral health concern while they\u2019re here.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, if a child was admitted after overdosing, CHOP was equipped to handle the medical issues, but didn\u2019t have the resources to address the cause of the behavior. \u201cThis new unit will help us dive into why you did this and help put the child and the family on a better path to move forward,\u201d Hagerty says.<\/p>\n

Creating a medical behavioral unit from scratch<\/h2>\n

CHOP decided the best approach would be to collocate these patients and staff in a designated unit that would support their medical needs and have the necessary safety features to reduce anxiety and stress. Moving from project concept to opening was not an easy process, however.<\/p>\n

In fall 2015, CHOP physicians and clinicians and designers from ZGF Architect<\/a>s (Portland, Ore.) began an extensive benchmarking process, quickly realizing that although solutions were in place at other facilities, what they wanted to create\u2014a medical behavioral unit\u2014didn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

For example, Seattle Children\u2019s Hospital in Seattle has a psychiatry and behavioral medicine unit located adjacent to a medical unit. Other facilities, such as Hasbro Children\u2019s Hospital in Providence, R.I., have psychiatric units where minor medical issues can be managed.<\/p>\n

CHOP\u2019s goal, though, was to create a freestanding unit for patients with complex medical conditions that\u2019s equipped with multiple safety features, such as equipment and monitors housed in locked cabinets to prevent access by patients, improved acoustics to reduce noise on the unit, and ligature-free bathrooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to design it in such a way that you can\u2019t throw a chair or rip things off the walls to make the rooms as safe as possible for these kids,\u201d Hagerty says.<\/p>\n

Next, ZGF led a multidisciplinary team, including physicians, nurses, and psychologists, through design charrettes to create six patient avatars that represent the types of patients who will likely use the unit:<\/p>\n