Albuquerque-based University of New Mexico Hospital has opened a $36 million Children’s Psychiatric Center, the state’s only children’s emergency psychiatric unit that serves patients regardless of ability to pay.
A ribbon-cutting for the 32,500-square-foot facility was held June 9 after nearly two years of construction. The center houses 36 inpatient beds and has the capacity to expand to 52, according to a hospital news release. It also includes a dedicated four-bed unit for the highest-acuity patients. The hospital expects to begin seeing patients in July.
The project replaces a 1970s-era cottage model with a single centralized inpatient building. Consolidating care is expected to reduce patient safety incidents, improve operational efficiency and lower campus operating costs. The average patient stay runs 10 to 11 days.
The facility was built around trauma-informed design principles.
“We took into account the seating, the colors and the view, to make it a therapeutic space rather than a detention space,” Mauricio Tohen, MD, chair of the UNM School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, said in a statement.
The center also has a training component: Its centralized layout creates space for students and clinical trainees to learn pediatric psychiatric care, which is a pipeline priority as New Mexico faces ongoing behavioral health workforce shortages.
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