Stony Brook Hospital Unveils New Psychiatric Emergency Facility

Hospital officials on Thursday unveiled Stony Brook University Medical Center's new psychiatric emergency annex, which will open to patients in December and is expected to serve at least 6,000 patients per year.

Dr. Mark Sedler, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science and director of the comprehensive psychiatric emergency center (CPEP), said the new center will raise the level of psychiatric care in Suffolk County, especially after the closure of major psychiatric care facilities in Kings Park and Central Islip. Consequences of those closures included increased homelessness and a "revolving door population" of psychiatric patients who were frequently hospitalized with few resources in the way of outpatient care.

According to hospital officials, the new CPEP is more therapeutic, private, and safer than the previous facility.

"We're still in the process of transformation ... it's sort of a game of catchup to some extent," Sedler said, "which is to say that the institutionalization of patients and the closure of these state facilities wasn't really matched by the augmentation of community resources to pick up the slack and so we still have a period of mismatch."

The new facility is three times the size of the previous psychiatric emergency care space, which "quickly became obsolete" and suffered from overcrowding, Sedler said. It has been five years in the making.

It is equipped to provide extended evaluation for patients up to 72 hours, with a dedicated family waiting area and triage room, separate entries for children and for police-escorted patients, an isolation room for patients who may become violent, lockers for patients' belongings, doors that lock to segment the different areas, and more.

"It will be helping the most fragile of those in Suffolk County," said Fred Sganga, acting CEO of the hospital.