Process and Impact of Development of an Adolescent Emergency Psychiatry Unit at a Large Urban Hospital.

Objectives: Boarding of adolescent patients with mental health concerns requiring ongoing observation and treatment is of increasing concern across US emergency departments. The objective was a proof of concept of developing an adolescent psychiatric emergency unit and assessment of the impact of this unit on lengths of stay (LOS).

Methods: We describe the creation of the unit designed to allow safe assessment and boarding of patients, and appropriate interventions and services, while arranging transfer to inpatient facility or safe discharge home. Using a precreation and postcreation analysis and comparison with a similar facility that did not create such a unit, we utilized linear regression to investigate the primary outcome of total length of stay and secondary outcomes of psychiatric emergency department and pediatric emergency department length of stay for both unit-eligible patients and all patients.

Results: The overall length of stay was not associated with a statistically significant change for unit-eligible patients; however, there was a significant decrease in the pediatric emergency department LOS for unit-eligible patients. This was associated with a decrease in beds lost to boarding in the pediatric emergency department of 544 hours per month.

Conclusions: Creation of an adolescent psychiatric emergency unit without allotment of significant additional resources is an option to decrease pediatric emergency department boarding times for adolescent patients requiring ongoing emergent therapy for mental health concerns.