July 29, 2024 at 1:41 pm
By Taylor Blatchford Seattle Times engagement reporter
King County officials gathered Monday to celebrate the upcoming opening of a walk-in center for people in crisis in Kirkland, a new place where people can receive care in an overtaxed mental health system.
The center is expected to open Aug. 5 after final construction and inspections. It is not one of the five funded by a county property tax levy that passed last year, although its operator plans to apply when a request for proposals opens this fall.
The new center is the first place in the county where adults will be able to walk in and receive urgent mental health care, regardless of their insurance coverage or ability to pay. State and local leaders hope that centers like these will fill a crucial gap in a mental health care system that doesn’t have enough beds and is inaccessible to many.
New crisis care center in Kirkland
King County’s first walk-in center for people in crisis will soon open in Kirkland, adding a care provider to the region’s overtaxed mental health care system. Any adult can walk into the center and receive care, regardless of insurance coverage.
Connections Health Solutions, a private behavioral health company that operates similar centers in Arizona and Virginia, hopes the Kirkland center will serve up to 14,000 adults annually. The $25 million center is primarily funded by a mix of county funding and grants from the state Department of Commerce. It includes an urgent care clinic, an observation unit where people can stay for up to 23 hours, and 32 beds for patients to stay up to 14 days before being discharged or referred elsewhere.
Washington’s mental health system is “frayed well beyond the breaking point,” King County Executive Dow Constantine said in an interview before the center’s opening. Right now, people in crisis often end up in hospital emergency rooms or jail, or they don’t get help at all.
“This center and those that will follow it are our statement that we are not willing to accept the status quo that is unproductive, that is inhumane, that is inconsistent with who we are as people,” Constantine said on Monday. “We are stepping up to deal with that reality.”
“This is the happiest place in the state of Washington this morning,” Gov. Jay Inslee said at the ribbon cutting. “A large group of people are going to come through these doors and really have a new lease on life and get through the difficult moments.”
Inside the center
Set in a Kirkland business complex just off Interstate 405, the outside of the center looks more like an office building than a medical center.
The leased 67,500-square-foot building, formerly a Lowe’s corporate headquarters, was a good fit because of its convenience to highways and public transit, said Morgan Matthews, the vice president of business development at Connections. It’s also five minutes away from an EvergreenHealth hospital, where patients can be transferred if they need a higher level of medical care.
When patients walk into the center, they’re greeted by cool blues and greens and a mossy wall behind a large front desk. A separate back entrance and designated parking allow for easy drop-offs from first responders, who can then fill out paperwork or take a quick break in a designated office.
On the first floor, an urgent-care clinic will let patients walking in see a clinician for quick appointments, such as filling prescriptions or getting support for substance use. The center aims to have a provider see patients within 90 minutes of their arrival.
Also on the first floor, a 23-hour observation unit — what Matthews called “the backbone of a well-functioning crisis center” — has space for up to 32 patients. A staff bay with computers and large windows looks out onto an open room where cushioned reclining chairs on wheels can be moved around. Small “calm rooms” with rocking chairs and sofas connect to the main observation unit, and other rooms are designed for group activities or private consults with providers.
In treatment areas, blown-up landscape photos from Washington photographer Nicholas Jakubik and shades of green, blue and purple were chosen to create a calming feeling. Three-dimensional installations on the walls double as artwork and a place for patients to self-soothe by running their hands over various textures.
Upstairs, the second floor has two 16-bed units: one focused on crisis stabilization for patients who come in voluntarily, and one for evaluation and treatment for both voluntary and involuntary patients, committed through the civil court system. Patients can stay in either unit for 14 days, although the average stay is three or four days in Connections’ Arizona centers, Matthews said.
All the center’s furniture is weighted for safety, so patients can’t pick it up or throw it. Door handles, bathrooms and bedrooms are designed for patient safety and to prevent self-harm.
The third floor is an open, empty construction zone for now. Connections might build additional treatment space in the future, or work with other community providers to add more services, Matthews said.
Filling a county need
The cities of Kirkland, Lake Forest Park, Bothell, Shoreline and Kenmore announced plans to build the center in early 2023, aiming to fill a need for crisis care. King County doesn’t have walk-in centers for people in crisis right now; the Downtown Emergency Service Center runs a crisis center in Seattle, but it only accepts drop-offs from first responders, hospital emergency departments and mobile crisis teams.
Months after the Kirkland center was announced, county voters approved a $1.25 billion property tax levy in 2023 to fund five centers for people in crisis. The county council passed a detailed implementation plan for the centers last month, opening the door to begin finding locations and operators for the centers this fall.
The county plans to open the first center in 2026, but that timeline could move more quickly if the county chooses the Connections center as one of its sites. The company is ready to apply when the request for proposals opens, Matthews said.
“The operator is certainly qualified and would sort of fit the bill in terms of the kinds of operators we’ll be soliciting for our five centers,” Constantine said. “They will be able to apply, and I think in a very strong position.”
Connections plans to share data with King County and work together closely, Matthews said. They’ll collect data on where patients are coming from, whether they’re coming from first responder drop-offs or walk-ins, and where they’re being referred to, among other metrics.
“This type of facility is really the first,” Matthews said. “As a company, our orientation will be to overcommunicate as much as we can, especially in the early days, because we all need to understand: Where do we go from here?”
Experts in crisis care often point to three components of a functioning system: someone to call (like 988, the suicide and crisis hotline), someone to respond (like mobile crisis or co-response teams) and somewhere to go to receive crisis care.
“We were missing a facility that truly would be no barrier to entry, would not require medical insurance, and would ensure that people had a place to go instead of our jails and emergency rooms,” state Sen. Manka Dhingra said at the ribbon-cutting. “Now, finally, we have a place to go.”