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The city’s public hospital system unveiled a plan to tackle the city’s mental health crisis on Thursday, touting investments to build inpatient capacity and develop its behavioral health workforce.
New York City Health + Hospitals’ plan, funded in part by a $41 million investment from the state, targets six priority areas to meet mental health demand and improve aging infrastructure. H+H plans to do that in part by expanding outpatient services, continuing to staff inpatient psych beds and providing incentives to encourage behavioral health clinicians to enter the workforce.
The release of the plan comes as the city continues to battle a lingering post-Covid mental health crisis. City health officials have developed several efforts to reduce crisis-level overdose rates, high levels of anxiety and depression among kids and persistent mental illness among the city’s homeless population in recent years.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the health system has seen multiple crises and an influx of people coming in for care, said Dr. Omar Fattal, head of behavioral health at H+H.
“Stigma is coming down, which is a good thing,” Fattal said. “But when you have stigma coming down, you also have more people asking for help.”
H+H says it’s the largest provider of behavioral health services in the city. More than 76,000 patients go to H+H for behavioral health care each year, and the public hospital system provides around 60% of all mental health and substance use services in New York City.
The public hospital system is aiming to expand a range of behavioral health services by 2026. Part of that plan is to restore inpatient psych beds that were shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic; the hospital system says it has more than 1,000 inpatient beds staffed and is aiming to staff even more beds. H+H also plans to expand outpatient care by 10%.
The health system is also targeting workforce development initiatives. Currently, it has a 30% vacancy rate of full-time behavioral health clinicians, which it has filled with temporary staff. H+H has launched a series of workforce development programs, including a loan repayment program and physician assistant training initiative to attract more clinicians to its system.
Fattal said the main goals of the plan is to increase capacity and meet demand. The plan also aims to build H+H’s peer support programs and improve specialized care for vulnerable groups, including youth.
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Amanda D'Ambrosio , 2024-06-07 11:33:04
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