There has been a growing need for expanded behavioral health resources nation-wide, and San Diego has not been immune to this. Exacerbated by effects from the pandemic lockdown, a growing substance-abuse problem, and endemic homelessness, social services resources have been stretched thin trying to provide for more and more behavioral health patients, who are presenting with higher and higher levels of acuity. Late last year the San Diego City Council declared a behavioral health bed crisis to push federal, state, and county governments to allocate more money and resources to our behavioral health safety net.
In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a “California Mental Health Movement,” a multi-billion-dollar attempt to re-design the behavioral health safety-net in California. Paradise Valley Hospital is doing what it can to address this crisis at the local level. The hospital has worked with the County to open the only Crisis Stabilization Unit in the South County at the Bayview Behavioral Health Campus, which has been consistently operating at near-capacity.
PVH has also expanded its Intensive Outpatient Services (IOPS) department at Bayview to reach patients who may have found it difficult to access behavioral health care in the past. “The behavioral health department at PVH and at Bayview Behavioral Health Campus already serves one-third of all inpatient behavioral health Medi-Cal patients in San Diego County,” points out Josue Pandeli, LCSW, PVH Director of Social Services. Josue intends to increase this capacity with our outpatient services, as well.
In August of this year, the hospital signed a letter of agreement with Optum San Diego, a non-governmental agency that helps facilitate San Diego Medi-Cal patients’ access to healthcare resources, among other services. While most healthcare facilities tend to avoid Medi-Cal patients because of unfavorable re-imbursement rates, PVH Behavioral Health Services (BHS) has decided to seek these patients out, simply because we, as a hospital, recognize the critical need for this. “We are willing to treat the people in the community we serve,” adds Pandeli.
This community includes people of all walks of life. “We see clients from 18 years old to 90,” says Pandeli. They are also now seeing an increase of active military and veteran clients. Despite the increase in the volume of patients they are seeing, and the higher levels of acuity, PVH BHS maintains an effort to create a healing and nurturing atmosphere for their patients, as much as possible. “Our EVS does a tremendous job keeping our patient care and work areas clean,” says Bayview IOPS manager Jennifer Lacey, LMFT. “And we’ve decorated the treatment areas with artwork. We go out of our way to make this a therapeutic setting.”
Bayview IOPS conducts group and individual psychotherapy, with onsite nursing care, and psychiatrist-assisted medication management. Clients typically attend three times a week, with meals provided. Therapies are structured along three tracks: the treatment of symptoms of psychosis; mood disorders, such as depression; and a Spanish language track. The Spanish track is unique to Bayview IOPS in San Diego, and is another example of the hospital’s commitment to its community where a large segment of the population is Spanish-speaking. Along with Josue and Jennifer, Bayview IOPS is led by Dr. Takeisha Niday, MD, the program’s medical director, and Drs. Laurence Saben, MD, and Samuel Kugel, MD.