Dec. 10, 2020

A four-story, $28 million addition to Avera Behavioral Health Center will include more space for children and 24-hour psychiatric urgent care.

The 60,000-square-foot project, which also includes residential addiction care for youth and partial hospitalization space for adults, including seniors, is substantially funded by the The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, which is providing a $13 million grant that includes an $8 million gift and a $5 million matching portion.

“The need for psychiatric care for at-risk youth is great, and the needs are complex. Anger, acting out, anxiety, depression and chemical dependency are being seen in children and adolescents at younger ages, and the numbers are growing,” Walter Panzirer, a trustee with the Helmsley Charitable Trust, said in a statement.

“This expansion will help care for all of the needs that Avera is presented with. Avera Behavioral Health is the only provider of many of these services in a 250-mile radius. This includes most of South Dakota, northwest Iowa, northeast Nebraska and southwest Minnesota. We want to help provide resources so that youth and their families can experience the life-changing intervention offered by expert and dedicated professionals.”

The Avera Foundation plans to raise an additional $5 million.

Construction is expected to start yet this year, with the building opening in early 2022.

Nationwide, the suicide rate for children age 10 to 14 more than doubled from 1999 to 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and nearly half of high school seniors have said they’ve used an illicit drug other than alcohol or tobacco.

The pandemic is expected to drive additional need, with an anticipated increase ahead in anxiety and depression among children because of social isolation, disconnectedness, uncertainty, change, fear and other factors, as well as delayed treatment in some cases.

“We’re all talking about the present needs right now of bed space and ICU space and nursing space. The third wave will be a behavioral healthcare crisis wave because of all the great change unfortunately these children and adults had to have with behavioral health,” Panzirer said.

“People who have lost their job, people who aren’t able to deal with the changes the pandemic has brought and the stress the pandemic has brought and many loved ones that have been lost … hopefully by building this facility we can help address that.”

Avera’s most recent Community Health Needs Assessment identified top needs as gaps in services for behavioral health and chemical dependency.

“This project brings a lot of pieces together and much-needed services in this area,” said David Flicek, president and CEO of Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center.

“One of the unmet needs in this community happens to be access to be behavioral health and addiction care.”

Conversations with Panzirer quickly revealed his passion for behavioral health, ideas for programming and desire to build beyond what Avera had initially envisioned, Flicek said.

“He told us: ‘It isn’t big enough. You need to have a bigger facility.’ He is truly a visionary when it comes to behavioral health.”

The $28 million project at the site at 4400 W. 69th St. includes:

Fourth floor: A 14-bed child unit and youth residential addiction care.

The new child unit adds to 40 beds in two specialized units already available for patients younger than 18. This will make space in the existing hospital to group teenagers and “tweeners” closer together while giving younger children specialized care.

“The behavioral health needs of a 7-year-old, an 11-year-old and a 17-year-old are all very different. This project will help us to better meet individual patient needs,” said Thomas Otten, assistant vice president, Avera Behavioral Health Center.

The fourth floor also will provide eight beds for youth residential addiction care – a service that is new to Avera and otherwise no longer exists in South Dakota.

“Our addiction care center has now been in operation for a year, and many people have asked when we are going to offer residential services for those under 18. Addiction care often goes hand in hand with other behavioral health disorders, such as depression, as youth try to mask their pain. This new wing will allow us to provide this needed level of care,” Otten said.

Third floor: Senior behavioral health unit. Avera’s senior adult program will move from the Avera Prince of Peace Retirement Community campus to the new wing. Several years ago, the program was moved to the Prince of Peace campus to free up space at the Avera Behavioral Health Center. Now, this will make room for expanding the transitional care unit at the Avera Prince of Peace campus for hard-to-place patients with specialized medical needs.

Second floor: Adult beds. This will provide space for a possible future adult unit and four additional adult beds right away, as well as a walkway between the new wing and the existing building. It also will include shell space for future expansion.

When the Avera Behavioral Health Center opened in 2006, the hope was to meet area needs through 2025, but it was quickly at capacity, Avera said. The additional space will “meet needs well into the future.”

Ground floor: 24-hour psychiatric urgent care and partial hospitalization. Currently, hospital emergency rooms are the only option in Sioux Falls for families or law enforcement when someone is having a psychiatric crisis, such as suicidal thoughts, intent or plan.

“Medical emergency rooms are not specially designed for psychiatric care. We will have expert staff ready to help people with psychiatric needs at any time of the day or night. This will be a great option for individuals and families in crisis as well as our first responders,” Otten said.

The ground floor also will provide space for partial hospitalization – for up to 30 adults and 10 youths. Partial hospitalization involves therapy and treatment during the day while the patient goes home at night.

This is the first time Avera will be able to offer partial hospitalization to youth, allowing them to spend part of their day in school and part of their day making progress on their behavioral health condition that may be impeding their success in school and life.

A robust telehealth component with the addition will provide for chemical dependency evaluations or mental health assessments for students in schools across the region, Avera said.

“We benefit people over a large geographic radius across multiple states,” Otten said.

“The families we see are often desperate to find answers. Their child’s life and well-being is endangered due to risk of suicide or self-harm. Through this grant, we will have the ability to treat the growing needs of our communities. We are so grateful for this opportunity to look at the full continuum of care and identify where we could enhance and add services in order to better serve our community. This addition will change thousands of lives.”

The Helmsley Charitable Trust has had a decadelong partnership with Avera, largely around supporting telemedicine and cancer care. The most recent donation brings its philanthropic support to Avera to more than $67 million.

“This is a game-changer,” Panzirer said of the behavioral health expansion. “This will help so many youth, so many adults and just the people in our region address an unmet need of mental health.”