Vancouver Access & Assessment Centre celebrates 4 months of success
Vancouver’s Access and Assessment Centre (AAC) celebrated its four-month anniversary last week. This short-term treatment service is having system wide impact by providing better access to Mental Health and Substance Use (MHSU) services in Vancouver and helping clients stay well in their community.
The AAC opened to the public in late April and has already had a positive impact on clients. The AAC is a clinic for Vancouver Adult residents who are experiencing a non-life threatening mental health and/or substance use crisis. Staff are available 24/7, and can see clients on site, talk by phone or visit them at home when needed.
To celebrate the success of the first four months of operations, AAC leadership provided a delicious lunch party to thank all staff of the AAC and those staff behind the scenes that helped in getting this new program started. Dr. Soma Ganesan, Department Head of Psychiatry, was the MC for the afternoon and talked about the importance of celebrating and sharing the success of the program as a team and the need for continued parties.
The AAC was a part of the larger Vancouver acute & community MHSU services redesign that began in late 2013. A driver of the AAC came from patient and family feedback asking for improved access to MHSU services in Vancouver, stating that current access was confusing and not as timely as they would like. Families wanted better resources for their loved ones and more therapeutic spaces and interventions that did not involve using the emergency department. Recognizing that one program alone would have little impact, MHSU staff, physicians and leadership worked closely on many initiatives to help support the goal of creating better access to MHSU services and urgent assessments in Vancouver.
Our goal is supported by acute initiatives like standardizing admission and discharge criteria as well as a simplified rounds process standardized across the units. To help support clients in the community, Community Flow leader, Georgina Maddern, facilitates weekly teleconferences around complex clients and a communications protocol was revamped to ensure that all care providers are receiving information about clients. Working very closely with the AAC, the VGH Outpatient Psychiatry Team (OPT) is undergoing a service redesign of its own. In February, OPT welcomed two new programs into the OPT space: SAFER and Community Link Program. The staff from these programs have brought with them knowledge and expertise and have been a great additional resource for our OPT clients and their families.
Vancouver MHSU services are working towards providing the best care for the people in our community and providing right place and right time care for Vancouver residents. We thank everyone who gave input into the Vancouver MHSU redesign and who worked determinedly to complete projects and make our redesign a success. Emergency department volumes have decreased and the skilled staff and therapeutic environment in the AAC is helping us support clients and their families better.
Interested in learning more about the AAC? Visit our web page on VCH.ca: http://www.vch.ca/your-health/health-topics/mental-health/vancouver-access-&-assessment-centre–aac-/
For more information:
http://vchnews.ca/news/2016/04/28/vancouver-mhsu-access-assessment-centre-now-open/#.V9mTblsrKUk