Hospitals shouldn’t be daunted by taking on multiple levels of behavioral healthcare at once, according to Jonathan Alpert, MD, chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
New York City.-based Montefiore Health System is launching seven new outpatient behavioral health programs, including behavioral health urgent care, a new outpatient clinic for children and a partial hospitalization program for adults.
The goal behind the new programs is to address gaps in care, Dr. Alpert told Becker’s. The new urgent care and partial hospitalization programs connect to the hospital’s inpatient services.
“Even though it’s a lot for our team to do all at once, there are a lot of interconnections that make it part of our whole in terms of developing what we hope will be a robust continuum of mental health services for the communities we serve,” Dr. Alpert said.
The emergency department at Montefiore Medical Center is one of the busiest in the country, and around 5% of visits in 2024 were for behavioral health needs. Even though launching several outpatient programs at once may seem daunting, Dr. Alpert said it’s likely to be more successful at reducing ED visits than a “piecemeal” approach.
“If you’re thinking of your system overall and having a wide aperture, then you realize that creating those things simultaneously — urgent care, bridge care, intensive outpatient care — are all part of the same goals of trying to decant very busy emergency departments and address the fact that there are never enough inpatient beds,” he said.
The system is also launching programs to treat specialized populations, including an early-psychosis intervention program, eating disorder treatment and a perinatal partial hospitalization program.
Montefiore anticipates hiring 50 new staffers to support the outpatient programs, and add an additional 10,000 annual visits.
Salimah Velji, unified executive administrator for Montefiore’s department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, told Becker’s the system relied on clinical staff and leaders to identify the programs that would be most helpful for the community.
“We’re not constraining our own thinking based on what already exists. I think what’s been really neat about consulting our clinical teams is we ask them to think outside the box,” she said. “If you could really solve this problem, forget all the rules — what do you think would make the biggest impact?” she said.
The new outpatient programs are funded by $18 million in grants from New York State’s Office of Mental Behavioral Health Center of Excellence, a program backed by Medicaid managed care plans.
Monefiore also received $7 million in funding from the state in 2024 to add inpatient behavioral health beds and outpatient services.
When it comes to big behavioral health investments, health system leaders should think broadly about the return on the investment for departments, institutions and the community, Ms. Velji said.
“If you think comprehensively about those, I think you can really make the case and rally people around these really important goals,” she said.
