Photo by Allison Perrine
NEPTUNE CITY – Whether you have the flu or feelings of depression or anxiety, a new urgent care center with behavioral health services can help.
At a ribbon cutting Friday, the people behind Hackensack Meridian Urgent Care with Behavioral Health, located across from Jersey Shore University Medical Center, said this could be the first center of its kind in the country.
The center’s opening is a collaborative effort between Hackensack Meridian Health, with corporate offices in Edison, and Carrier Clinic, based in Belle Mead, meant to bring integrated health care to the community. Their three main goals are to get rid of the stigma surrounding behavioral health issues, provide people experiencing mental health issues with the latest treatments through new technologies, and rapidly expand access to care.
“What’s extraordinary about it is that it’s ordinary,” said Donald Parker, CEO of Carrier Clinic and president of Care Transformation for Behavioral Health for HMH. “It’s in a neighborhood, it’s in a community, it’s across the street from the hospital. It’s got a parking lot. It’s not someplace that you can’t see. It’s not hiding away in the back of the emergency room.”
Parker said he thinks the future of behavioral health is “all about being commonplace, being ordinary, being in the places that we need it.” The center is located on Route 33 in Neptune City.
The center has a physician on site at all times, access to specialists, a lab with X-ray and EKG machines, as well as follow-up communication with primary care providers. It is not a clinic nor does it replace a patient’s psychiatrist, therapist or psychologist. Patients with more serious symptoms such as thoughts of suicide should go to a Behavioral Health Clinic, professional or local emergency room equipped to handle that higher level of care, according to the center.
Parker said they expect this to be the first behavioral health urgent care center integrated with a medical urgent care center in the country. It will give patients the ability to walk in and receive help immediately. Previously, people seeking immediate help with nonemergent issues might have had to go to the emergency room, which he described as “expensive” and “crowded.”
Bob Garrett, Hackensack Meridian Health CEO, said patients with mental illnesses or addictions had to navigate busy emergency departments at hospitals, competing with patients who are having strokes, heart attacks or have been involved in motor vehicle accidents. “Many of those patients don’t need emergent care, but they need urgent care. They need quality urgent care. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do here,” said Garrett.
The pursuit to open such a center started seven years ago when Parker wrote a grant for a center for Medicare and Medicaid services that was ultimately denied. “I’ve been pounding on it,” he said.
After looking at statistics years ago, Garrett said the board of Hackensack Meridian Health knew it had to do something to combat the problems facing the health care system at large. He said studies show that 1 in 5 Americans have some type of mental illness.
“We saw the rates of depression across the United States and in New Jersey significantly rise. We saw suicide rates continually going up. Just last year alone in New Jersey, over 3,000 of our citizens passed away due to opioid overdoses,” said Garrett.
Noting a lack of addiction treatment centers in New Jersey, Garrett said one is now underway in northern New Jersey that will open later this year into next year. It will include 80 in-patient beds and out-patient services and programs. “Too many people in New Jersey, particularly our young people, are still traveling out of state for addiction treatment services. They’re going to states like Florida and Arizona and California,” he said.
An estimated 140 attendees visited Neptune City’s urgent care center for a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sept. 20. Speakers included Garrett; Parker; former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy; deputy commissioner of Integrated Health for New Jersey Deborah Hartel; and Neptune Mayor Carol Rizzo.
In a passionate delivery, Kennedy said the nation’s response to the opioid epidemic and suicide crisis is “pitiful.”
“What I love about what Bob and Don and all of you have done here is you’re setting an example of what the future should look like,” Kennedy said. “We want chronic disease management of these illnesses. We want them integrated into the rest of physical health care.”
Freeholder Gerry P. Scharfenberger said the center fills “a huge niche” and also gets patients out of the emergency room. “I think it’s great. It’s really something I’d like to see expanded.”
