The new mental health crisis center coming to Cleveland’s Central neighborhood is less than three weeks away from opening — and curious eyes can finally get a look.
It’ll provide a wide range of services all in one place: from 24/7, walk-in crisis response to longer-term beds for people who need emergency stabilization, to a clinic with psychiatry and primary care. It’ll also have a pharmacy on-site.
Leaders say the new center, called the Glick Recovery Campus, espouses a “no wrong door” philosophy by embracing people coming from nearly every scenario. That includes voluntary walk-ins, drop-offs from police and EMS and residents who need to be held involuntarily, which is something former facilities lacked. The crisis services will be for adults only.
“Instead of patching over crisis with jail time or costly E.R. visits, this center will revolutionize how our community responds to crises,” said U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown at a ribbon cutting for the campus on Sept 4.
The outpatient health center on the building’s third floor will open Sept. 14, while the 24/7, walk-in crisis services will open on Sept. 28. Both will be run by The Centers, a nonprofit health organization. More beds specifically for people withdrawing from drugs or alcohol will open in January.
The center’s opening follows a drawn-out debate. Last summer, the Cuyahoga County board that oversees alcohol, drug and mental health services — the ADAMHS board — shared a plan to divert money from other Cleveland providers in order to pay for the new center’s operations. And earlier this year, the board’s new CEO raised concerns that even broader cuts would be required as a result of its commitment to the project.
The ADAMHS board ultimately scaled back its financial commitment to the project, limiting its impact on other mental health providers.
How the new center will work for patients
Patients who walk into the facility will first be checked into behavioral health urgent care. They’ll be greeted by a peer support staffer “who understands them, understands their walk of life,” said Stacey Rubenfeld, the Chief of Institutional Advancement at The Centers. The nonprofit is partnering with Thrive Peer Recovery Services, a local nonprofit that trains peer support workers who have lived through mental health or addiction challenges themselves.
Patients are then given a social work assessment and triaged based on their need. Some might have missed a psychiatry appointment and need a medication refill, Rubenfeld said. They might be in and out in an hour. Others may need more serious stabilization and be referred to the first floor crisis recovery center, a large room with about 20 recliners staffed by nurse practitioners, a psychiatrist, therapists, nurses and social workers.
Here, residents are assigned a chair where they can stay for up to 23 hours. The hope is that residents in a setting like this will be seen by clinical staff and stabilized more quickly than in an emergency room or jail.
Patients who need more than 23 hours to get stable can move to the second floor, where they can stay overnight, get three meals a day and be seen by mental health providers. The rooms are unlocked, and stays are voluntary. The average stay is expected to be between three and seven days, said Jane Granzier, the campus’ director of Continuous Care. It may stretch longer than that in some circumstances, she said.
“Housing will be our largest challenge for folks coming in because we know the system doesn’t work that quickly,” Granzier said. “Our goal is to not discharge into a shelter setting.”
After residents do leave, they can come back to see providers on the third floor, where there are rows and rows of exam rooms for primary care, psychiatry, counseling and more.
Patients might also arrive at the facility by way of police car or ambulance. The new building has a separate entrance where first responders can drop patients off. They will be greeted by a peer support specialist, a registered nurse and a behavioral health technician, so first responders can get back on the road. Then, patients go through the same triage process as those who walked in.
The facility also has several locked rooms on its first floor for residents who have been involuntarily committed or who need a more quiet space. They’re held until a psychiatrist assesses them and determines next steps, Rubenfeld said.
New facility constructed for crisis care
The new facility was constructed with clients’ mental health challenges in mind.
The door handles, television and furniture are all “anti-ligature,” meaning it is difficult to use them for self-harm or harming others. The door handles don’t poke out; instead, they curve into the door. Televisions will be hung behind locked cabinets, so they can’t be touched. The furniture is either built in or too heavy to pick up or move.
At the same time, the building has features intentionally meant to calm residents, like the muted blues and greens that recur throughout the buildings’ walls or the windows that are in almost every room.
The second floor, where patients are staying for longer periods of time, has a rooftop deck. Clients can get fresh air or smoke, if they need to.
“When someone’s in a crisis, it’s not the time to ask them to give up one of their primary ways of calming themselves down,” Granzier said.
The rooftop will be fenced in with tall metal mesh to prevent anyone from scaling it.
The pharmacy, which is on the first floor, also has some unique tools that leaders hope will improve service. One is a machine that fills bottles with medications. This will allow staff to focus on serving patients, said Beth Powell, The Centers’ pharmacy vice president. The other machine sorts and packages medications into days of the week instead of giving patients a bottle with 30 days of pills. That’s helpful for patients who struggle to remember whether they took their meds, Powell said.
“We’ve seen that be really helpful with a lot of our patients … because you can look at the card and be like, ‘Oh yeah, I did take them,’” Powell said.
And on the top floor — the outpatient clinic — psychiatry and primary care offices run parallel to each other.
“It’s truly integrated care: within 10 feet, you can be transported to different levels of service,” said Liz Scott, vice president of Marketing and Communications at The Centers.
New center can take patients, unless medical care is needed
As The Centers prepares to open the building, staff members are focused on building relationships with other institutions that can make referrals. That includes the psychiatry teams at the Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth and University Hospitals, Rubenfeld said. It also includes police and EMS.
Staff at The Centers is meeting with first responders to educate them on when to bring patients to the Glick Recovery Campus instead of a hospital or jail, Rubenfeld said.
Cleveland police Deputy Chief Jarod Schlacht spoke at the ribbon cutting. The department is looking forward to partnering with The Centers, he said.
There is one group of people who shouldn’t be brought to the crisis center: People who require emergency medical treatment or have certain medical conditions. The Centers laid out a list of certain medical conditions that should get sent to an emergency department instead. Those include chest pain, difficulty breathing or high-risk pregnancies.
Last year, Cleveland’s EMS union wrote that it opposed the mental health crisis center because it was not co-located with a medical emergency room, since many patients have both mental and physical health issues.
Campus still counting on opioid settlement money
The Glick Recovery Campus withstood nearly a year of public discord and debate around how it would be funded. That conversation isn’t quite over yet.
Starting in 2027, the facility is counting on an influx of dollars from Cuyahoga County’s opioid settlement to operate it. But they still don’t have it in hand.
Cuyahoga County Council still has to vote on whether to give $12 million to The Centers to help support the Glick campus’ operations over the next three years. Council members are set to discuss the request next on Sept. 22.
Last summer, council members shared concerns about spending the one-time funding on operational costs.
Since 2021, the county’s opioid dollars have helped fund operations at the diversion center, which was billed as an alternative to jail for people in mental health or addiction crisis.
But officials shared last year that the county planned to close the diversion center after the new crisis center came online. The two facilities share similar purposes, and officials said both are not needed. The City of Cleveland also fined Oriana House, the nonprofit running the diversion center, thousands of dollars for not cleaning up mold found throughout the building last year, 19 News reported in June.
Now, there are plans to close the Cuyahoga County Diversion Center in October of this year, wrote Jennifer Ciaccia, a spokesperson for the county.
