County, metropolis and well being leaders picked up shovels Monday to interrupt floor on a brand new psychiatric well being facility at Tri-Metropolis Medical Heart in Oceanside.
The brand new psychiatric facility might be a safe, 13,560 sq. foot, 16-bed inpatient facility on the western fringe of the Tri-Metropolis Medical Heart campus.
“That is the most recent installment of future behavioral well being care in our county and it’s a key piece of the North County psychological well being security web,” mentioned Nick Macchione, the director of the San Diego County Well being and Human Companies Company.
In 2018, Tri-Metropolis closed its safe 18-bed psychiatric unit and 12-patient disaster stabilization middle, when a change in federal regulation required some expensive renovations.
However the closure left a void within the area for folks combating emergency psychological well being conditions.
Supervisor Nathan Fletcher mentioned many years of underfunding the psychological well being system have gotten us to the place we at the moment are.
“If everybody sitting right here proper now broke your leg as a society we might don’t have any downside getting you in we’d get you an x-ray, a forged, a pair of crutches — you’d be capable to go on along with your day,” he mentioned, “but when everybody right here proper now wanted psychological well being remedy or wanted substance abuse remedy it wouldn’t be accessible.”
Fletcher mentioned the brand new unit is a step in the fitting course.
“It will not be a damaged bone and but what we now have… it looks like at instances [what we have] are Band-Aids for these households and these people are equally damaged,” mentioned Dr. Gene Ma, the chief medical officer for Tri-Metropolis Healthcare District, echoing Fletcher’s analogy.
Ma mentioned for him, and for the medical doctors and households who desperately want remedy, this was greater than a groundbreaking. “These shovels signify hope. They signify a brand new day. And this mannequin is actually groundbreaking and so from the underside of my coronary heart from all of the suppliers I thanks,” he mentioned to the small crowd gathered for the ceremony.
The power is predicted to start operations subsequent 12 months.
