The new facility, which will treat mental health emergencies, is set to begin accepting patients on Tuesday, June 18, and state government officials celebrated the center’s opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday.
The crowd cheered as the oversized scissors closed with a satisfying crisp sound.
The ceremony, held at the new behavioral health crisis center, featured speeches from several officials, including University of New Mexico President Garnett Stokes, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller and Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.
County Administrator Julie Morgaz Baca says this is the culmination of a nearly decade-long effort aimed at closing the mental health care gap in Albuquerque and across the state.
“We’ve been working on this since I became county commissioner in 2015,” she said, “so this is a dream come true, not just for me but for the whole community.”
The center is a joint venture between Bernalillo County and the University of New Mexico, which are putting $20 million into the project, which the county funded through a tax approved by voters in 2014.
Chancellor Stokes said this is just one important step of many needed to address mental health care in the province.
“I know there’s a lot of planning going on right now because we’re really looking at the health care needs of New Mexico and recognizing that it’s not something that one entity can do alone,” she said, “so we’re really building the framework for what that looks like over the next 10 years.”
The roughly 50,000-square-foot facility will include a crisis triage center where adults can stay for up to 14 days, as well as a pediatric emergency center and peer living rooms for walk-in services and more.
The facility aims to act as a bridge for patients who don’t need traditional inpatient care but who need more support than is typically offered through outpatient services.
Medical Director Elizabeth Ferre said the facility is designed as a psychiatric emergency room, where patients will be evaluated and stabilized before being transferred to other facilities if they need longer-term treatment.
The facility also provides transportation for patients from police, correctional facilities and emergency medical personnel, aiming to ease the strain on regular emergency rooms.
If lawmakers pass the bill in an upcoming special session, the center could be the first of several to open across the state.
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