Griffin Hospital in Derby is opening an alternative emergency room for patients experiencing a mental health crisis.
The Emergency Psychiatric Assessment, Treatment and Healing (EmPATH) unit opened Wednesday and bills itself as the first unit of its type in the state.
“Over the past three years, mental health crisis cases at Griffin Hospital’s emergency department have surged by 50%, with one in seven patients seeking crisis care,” said Dr. Maria Dawe, chair of the Griffin Health psychiatry department, in a statement.
“This influx not only overwhelms our capacity, it delays care for all patients.
The EmPATH unit will expand services for community members in psychiatric crisis with a compassionate, dignified and patient-focused approach in a specially designed … environment.”
The new unit is spread across more than 4,000 square feet. It includes tall ceilings, natural light, a large common area, space for families and sensory rooms with patient-controlled music and lighting. The unit is staffed by psychiatrists, social workers and nurses trained in emergency psychiatry.
EmPATH was designed as an ER alternative for people experiencing mental health emergencies – suicidal ideation, psychosis, a depressive episode – by Dr. Scott Zeller of Vituity, a physician-owned practice.
“As chief of psychiatric emergency services at Alameda Health System for nearly 30 years, I saw firsthand the suffering psychiatric patients endured in emergency rooms,” Zeller said. “This inspired me to develop what would become EmPATH.”
Vituity has partnerships with more than 60 health systems nationally – including Griffin – for EmPATH.
According to a 2024 study published in Military Medicine, “EmPATH unit, a recently developed civilian hospital-based program, can work with higher acuity psychiatric crisis patients who would otherwise be admitted to an inpatient unit, showing promising results in avoiding the need for inpatient hospitalization.”
The study concluded that EmPATH units help decrease hospitalization rates, reduce restraints and violence, and shorten the patients’ boarding time in a holding area. “Such findings support the use of the EmPATH unit as a tactic for prolonged field care of psychiatric patients in a combat operational environment,” the authors wrote.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 41% of adults in Connecticut have experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression, while 121,000 adults are living with serious mental illness. Griffin’s EmPATH unit was set up with a $1 million gift from the Hewitt Foundation.
