Cascade Community Healthcare will break ground on a $1.83 million project to renovate its Evaluation and Treatment Center in Centralia to include a 23-Hour Crisis Relief Center.

Cascade hopes to officially open the treatment center in July 2025.

The construction is funded entirely through a Washington state Department of Commerce grant awarded in 2023 after the state Legislature passed a law establishing licensing for 23-hour crisis relief centers.

“23-hour facilities provide crisis response services where patients are treated or observed for fewer than 24 hours in recliner chairs as opposed to beds or stretchers,” the Washington State Hospital Association stated in a November 2023 article about the newly established facility type. “They are designed to be an alternative to hospital emergency departments, accepting all referrals and serving as a ‘no wrong door’ option for people experiencing behavioral health crises that don’t require emergency care.”

“This grant is an amazing opportunity to treat people with immediate behavioral health needs right when they need the help, and not wait until the crisis spirals out of control,” Richard Stride, CEO of Cascade Community Healthcare, said in a statement to the Washington state Department of Commerce when the grant was issued in 2023. “We will be able to treat individuals in crisis in a setting that is centered around their needs, rather than sitting in a hospital emergency department. Having immediate wraparound services will also be a game changer for our hospital.”

One of the primary goals of the facility is “to divert those that are experiencing a behavioral health issue out of the hospital into these centers, and that way they can get the help that they need right then and there instead of sitting in an ER and waiting and waiting and waiting for (mental health professionals) to arrive,” said Mindy Greenwood, chief of inpatient services for Cascade Community Healthcare.

The 23-Hour Crisis Relief Center will house 18 recliners and be open 24/7, though patients will only be allowed to stay in the center for 23 hours and 59 minutes after they first walk in.

“It’s because this is going to be classified as more of an outpatient kind of care, so when you hit 24-hours, it becomes inpatient,” Greenwood said.

Patients who require 24 or more hours of care will have inpatient options on site, thanks to Cascade’s existing inpatient Evaluation Treatment Unit and Crisis Stabilization Unit.

The Evaluation Treatment Unit is a secure section of the Evaluation and Treatment Center with 16 beds available to individuals experiencing an “emergent crisis.” Patients can be involuntarily committed to this unit.

The Crisis Stabilization Unit is a separate six-bed voluntary unit within the facility that works with individuals to mitigate foreseeable or urgent behavioral health crises.

“In this building, we will be able to address all three levels of care for them, for mental health,” Greenwood said.

The 23-Hour Crisis Relief Center will aim to address patients’ acute behavioral health crises, with the goal of providing whatever care is needed to get them out of crisis, be that psychiatric care, substance use disorder treatment or addressing basic needs like showering or treating mild wounds and illnesses.

The center will accept walk-ins and drop-offs, as well as referrals and transfers from Providence Centralia Hospital.

Cascade has already begun working with Providence Centralia Hospital and local law enforcement to develop procedures for when and how to refer and transfer patients to the 23-Hour Crisis Relief Center.

The Evaluation and Treatment Center has received 63 law enforcement drop-offs so far in 2024 and recently began accepting ambulance diversions, according to Greenwood.

“Amy (Walter), and I have worked very hard to build our community partners in anticipation of this,” Greenwood said.

Walter, the nursing manager at the Cascade Evaluation and Treatment Center, said she and the center’s nursing staff are looking forward to the 23-Hour Crisis Relief Center opening.

“It is exciting and it’s … such a great need,” Walter said. “I’m a very big proponent about the need for increased mental health awareness and increased help for mental health, because so many people don’t know how to navigate the system.”

Across all of its services, Greenwood said, Cascade Community Healthcare has a goal of treating patients with compassion.

“We don’t care how many times they come through our door. We’re not judging them, because here’s the deal: they know this is a safe place and they can get answers. Not always the answers they like, but they can get some answers and get some direction,” Greenwood said.

Cascade Community Healthcare will look to hire additional nursing and mental health staff before the 23-Hour Crisis Relief Center opens.

Cascade’s Evaluation and Treatment Center is located at 3510 Steelhammer Lane in Centralia.

For more information, visit https://cascadecommunityhealthcare.org/evaluation-center/.