Omaha-based Children’s Nebraska opened its new Behavioral Health and Wellness Center on Jan. 7 with a continuum of care designed to meet families at every level of need, Renee Rafferty, senior vice president of the center, told Becker’s.
“We’re in one of the most meaningful transformations of behavioral health in the history of our organization, in terms of being able to expand the services into a full continuum of care and meet families and kids where they are and serve all behavioral health crises,” she said.
The center unites crisis care, partial hospitalization, primary care, inpatient and outpatient services under one roof — a consolidation designed to reduce unnecessary emergency department use and drive system-level change in pediatric behavioral health.
The “No Wrong Door” policy and continuum of care at the center aims to ease the minds of patients and their families when seeking behavioral health services, Ms. Rafferty said. The center focuses on trauma-informed care, especially for children and parents who’ve experienced trauma related to care-seeking challenges.
The goal is to direct patients to the least restrictive intervention during a crisis, she said.
For example, children who present in urgent care are assessed, and they and their families are provided with coping tools and education. If further intervention is needed, they can be transferred to the crisis stabilization unit for support before reentering the community. If stabilization is not possible, they can be admitted to one of the center’s 40 inpatient psychiatric beds.
When designing the center, Children’s Nebraska aimed to build a long-term solution that would not require additional inpatient beds, Ms. Rafferty said. The team studied best practices in crisis stabilization and adopted the No Wrong Door model, including the addition of urgent care and crisis stabilization units.
After evaluating data to find high-need areas in the community, the system identified a gap in partial hospitalization, Ms. Rafferty said. The state does not offer such treatment for children, often leaving families to choose between outpatient care or an emergency department visit. Partial hospitalization serves as a step up or down depending on a child’s needs, she said.
All the programs were developed together to ensure a seamless patient experience. Two of the programs include partial hospitalization tracks for eating disorders and for mental health and substance use disorder.
Despite widespread staffing challenges in behavioral health, Ms. Rafferty said the system has fully staffed the center for several months by prioritizing workforce support and building a strong culture.
The center’s key success metrics are reducing emergency department utilization and improving family engagement.
“We do look at high utilization of crisis service emergency departments and recognize that we want crisis services to be available whenever kids need them,” Ms. Rafferty said. “What we’re looking for, though, is if kids are using those services because there aren’t any of the services they need.”
