“A soft opening.”

That’s how Munson Healthcare officials describe the first few months at the new Grand Traverse Mental Health Crisis and Access Center.

After years of planning and buildout – not to mention big funding allocations from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and from the Michigan Health & Hospital Association (MHA) – Traverse City’s new mental health crisis center finally opened its doors January 5. Come July, the facility will transition into full 24/7 operations.

The new center is a partnership between Munson Healthcare and Northern Lakes Community Mental Health Authority, two entities that have been looking to expand northern Michigan’s continuum of mental health care services for years.

“The best practice in a community crisis continuum is that everybody knows a place to call, so a crisis hotline; a place to go, so a crisis center; and someone to come to you, which is a mobile crisis unit,” says Terri Lacroix-Kelty, executive director of behavioral health for Munson Healthcare. “When you have those pieces in place, then you have a really good crisis continuum – a system where, if people are getting into crisis, you're intervening early.”

According to Lacroix-Kelty, northern Michigan has had the crisis hotline and mobile crisis unit parts of that equation covered for years, thanks to Northern Lakes. Until now, the Grand Traverse region did not have a crisis center dedicated specifically to mental health services.

That changed in January, when Munson and Northern Lakes opened the Grand Traverse Mental Health Crisis and Access Center in a 22,000-square-foot building on the Munson Medical Center campus. Lacroix-Kelty calls the center’s opening “a long time coming,” and praises the project as proof “that patience and persistence pays off.”

The ARPA money for the center was allocated back in December 2022. In September 2023, Munson landed an additional $5 million from the MHA, for “adding much-needed pediatric mental health and crisis services in northern Michigan.” 

Right now, the crisis center is operating Sundays through Thursdays from 8am to 8pm. Munson Healthcare COO Laura Glenn says the idea was to treat the first few months “as kind of a soft opening,” with opportunities to introduce the new center to the community and for the staff to navigate the learning curve before expanding to round-the-clock service. That pivot to 24/7 operations is intended to take place in July – as is the opening of a “psychiatric urgent care” component, which will serve both adults and children.

During its first phase, the center has been offering a Northern Lakes-operated welcome center, with services including behavioral health assessments, referrals to higher levels of care, crisis phone screening, mobile crisis services and peer support services.

With the second phase kicking off in July, the center will add not just 24/7 operations, but also psychiatric urgent care, to be operated by Munson staff. Northern Lakes will continue to focus on the center’s current more relaxed approach, which Michael Corby, behavioral health director for the center, describes as a “living room model” of mental health care.

“We've got a combination of social workers and peer support specialists in the building, and we have this big, beautiful new space where we’re able to de-escalate patients and help them figure out what the next steps are for them,” Corby says, noting the center was specifically designed to be a more comfortable and relaxing environment than the typical hospital setting. “A lot of the time, what we're seeing is individuals brought in by a support – so either a family member or a concerned boyfriend, girlfriend, or roommate – and typically it's folks who are experiencing a crisis and they just don't know what to do next.”

Patients in need of de-escalation are welcome to stay at the center “until they’re in a better frame of mind.” That de-escalation aspect has been the core selling point of the center’s first phase, though Corby stresses the facility’s professionals have also been able to help patients and their families make game plans for the future.

Because Traverse City hasn’t had a crisis center before, Glenn and Corby say one of the big priorities of the first few months has been to rewire the thinking around mental health in the community. Historically, Glenn says patients experiencing mental health crises in the Traverse City area have taken those concerns to the emergency department at Munson Medical Center (MMC) – a costlier and less well-suited course of action.

“Part of what we were trying to accomplish with the center was to have it be located close to the emergency department,” Glenn says, noting that the proximity will make it easy for ED staff to refer patients to a facility better-equipped to meet their needs.

“The center will be the known place to go when people need information or treatment around mental health,” Lacroix-Kelty says. “We're hoping people come before crisis. So, if parents are realizing, ‘Wow, my child seems to be struggling; I don't know what to do,’ we want them come to us with those access and support questions sooner rather than later.”

Based on patient numbers, Corby is confident the community is becoming more aware of the center. Across the first three months of operations, the center tallied 155 “contacts,” or patients who came through the door seeking care. In January, just 40 people visited; by March, the monthly visitor count had roughly doubled.

Corby expects the center will continue to see more patients as summer rolls in, especially with the shift to 24/7 service. Another bump will come later, when Munson and Northern Lakes open phases three and four of the center’s evolution: a nine-bed adult crisis residential unit and a six-bed pediatric crisis residential unit, respectively.

The adult unit is already built out and is “just working through the licensing and staffing,” per Glenn. That unit, which will be operated by Northern Lakes, is likely to open sometime this year. The pediatric unit, meanwhile – which Munson will lead – is still awaiting a buildout.

Once those residential components open, Glenn is confident the center will become an even more valuable tool for reducing strain on other aspects of Munson’s operations.

“A component of the population that we will serve in these crisis residential units are people that have historically ended up in our emergency departments, and have ended up staying there for prolonged periods of time because they're not safe to go home,” Glenn explained. “A lot of those people will be able to receive care in these crisis residential units, which honestly is a way more appropriate place for them to receive care than in an emergency department.”

MMC does have a small inpatient psychiatric unit already, but Glenn says that part of the hospital is “frequently at capacity,” with plenty of opportunities to relocate patients into a “less acute environment” of care.