ASH 023smMany of you know that the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) operates the Arizona State Hospital (ASH), where we provide inpatient psychiatric care to persons with serious mental illness who are in need of long term behavioral health care. ASH personnel provide state-of-the-art inpatient psychiatric and forensic care to patients with the highest acuity of behavioral health needs. Interdisciplinary care is delivered in collaboration with community providers, with a focus on recovery and a goal of reintegrating patients back into the community. What you may not know, if you haven’t been out there, is that ASH is located on a campus consisting of 93-acres of land located at 24th Street and Van Buren, in Phoenix, Arizona.

As we have been looking at opportunities to transform our services at ADHS, we developed a vision of creating a Center of Psychiatric Excellence on the ASH campus, providing the entire continuum of services at one location.  Through this vision,

ADHS is looking for opportunities for public-private partnerships to utilize available property and/or buildings located on the ASH campus to enhance and improve the behavioral health services available to the community. While ASH is looking for innovate ways to use resources and provide additional services to our community, there is no intent or desire to privatize any of the statutorily required services provided at the ASH campuses.

This Center of Psychiatric Excellence would provide a continuum of services to those with significant behavioral health needs.  Possible ideas for this public-private partnership include but are not limited to: outpatient integrated behavioral health services; medical office space; urgent psychiatric services; observation and stabilization (24 hr. holds); free standing psychiatric emergency room; adult inpatient acute psychiatric services (short-stay); residential treatment center; jail diversion; and other pediatric/adolescent services.

Yesterday, ADHS released a Request for Information to find out if there was any community interest in partnering with ASH to create our Campus of Excellence, and to find out if there were any other great ideas out there that we hadn’t imagined. If you are interested in finding out more about this unique opportunity, please check out our procurement website for more information and attend our informational meeting on June 9th.