McLean Hospital Increasing Beds in Belmont by 17 Percent

Mill Street's McLean Hospital is set to increase the number of beds on its Belmont facility by just about 17 percent and double the size of its Admissions Building after the state's Public Health Council approved expansion plans at the historic campus. 

The $12.5 million includes adding three floors to the three-story Admissions Building on the west end of the campus near the entrance.

The expansion will allow the nation's top psychiatric hospital – affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of the Partners HealthCare System – to add 31 beds to the Belmont site increasing the total number of beds to 183. 

Opened in 1987, the Admissions Building houses Intake and Evaluation, the Short Term Unit and Clinical Evaluation Center, where staff members evaluate and treat patients or refer them to specialty units.

The building also contains ambulatory psychiatric hospital services and other clinical services, such as Internal Medicine, Neurology and Electroconvulsive Therapy. 

McLean – a teaching hospital for Harvard University Medical School – stated in its application that the expansion was needed to meet increasing demand for psychiatric treatment in its short-term care and psychotic disorders units. 

Part of the state's approval requires McLean to expand interpreter services for non-English speaking patients, including providing free interpreters and place signs around the campus offering the service. 

McLean Hospital is Belmont's largest employer. 

As McLean is expanding, other sites are reduce their psychiatric services, according to the Boston Globe. Partners is scheduled to cut inpatient mental health services at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital.

Cambridge Health Alliance was going to eliminate child psychiatry beds in a money saving measure, until the state determined the service is critical to “preserving access and health status” for those under 19 in eastern Massachusetts.

Partners said it would reduce proposed cuts to inpatient mental health services at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital.