Health systems are turning to a new type of care facility to address increasing demands for mental health care — behavioral health urgent cares.
Over the past decade, the number of adult and pediatric emergency department visits involving mental health concerns has increased. More than half of adults report they or a family member have experienced a severe mental health crisis, KFF survey data from 2022 shows. From 2018 to 2020, the average rate of mental health-related ED visits among adults was 53 per 1,000 adults, according to CDC data. Among children, the rate was 14 per 100,000. The U.S. also has the highest maternal mortality rate of any high-income country, with suicides, drug overdoses and other mental health-related causes accounting for more than 22% of all pregnancy-related deaths, according to HHS.
The behavioral urgent cares provide same day outpatient mental health care at a lower cost than emergency departments, while also freeing up ED beds. The first mental health urgent care was opened by Edison, N.J.-based Hackensack Meridian Health in 2019. In about two years, at least 77 more behavioral urgent care sites were opened across the nation.
In the past year, about 20 more behavioral urgent cares have opened. Here are a few that Becker's covered since January:
- St. Louis-based SSM Health is opening the first behavioral health urgent care clinic in the city.
- Golisano Children's Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., will open a walk-in pediatric urgent care center outside of New York City to treat behavioral health concerns.
- Luminary Behavioral Health opened a behavioral urgent care location in Wichita, Kan.
- A tier 3 behavioral health urgent care has opened in Jacksonville, N.C. as part of the Eastern NC Outpatient and Behavioral Health Urgent Care, which is owned by Phoenix-based RI International.
- Clearwater, Fla.-based BayCare Health System is opening the first behavioral health urgent care center in West Central Florida.
- A new pediatric mental health urgent care is under construction at University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center.
Supporters of the center concept have raised concerns over urgent care center's ability to provide follow-up care. There are no numbers available about how many patients in total all the nation's behavioral urgent cares see or how many follow-ups are conducted.