PrairieCare Brooklyn Park gets ready to start construction
Thursday, June 12th, 2014
PrairieCare in Brooklyn Park will begin construction on new child/adolescent psychiatric care hospital next week. The official ground breaking will take place in July.
The new space will have 50 beds for inpatient care and serve children and adolescents with depression, anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses. The 72,000 sq. ft. facility will be the first of it’s kind and be able to help 1,500 kids annually.
“There are hundreds of youth in the Twin Cities in psychiatric emergencies who wait for hours in emergency departments or have to travel tremendous distances to get the care they need,” said Joel Oberstar, CEO and Chief Medical Officer, in a statement reported by KSTP. “The addition of these beds will greatly increase patients’ access to high quality, compassionate mental health care.”
The shortage of mental health facilities, especially for youth, is not uncommon, nor confined to Minnesota according to Bring Me The News. Currently, the PrairieCare Facility in Maple Grove has 250 beds and runs at capacity year round. This new hospital aims to help provide valuable and essential care.
PrairieCare is a doctor-owned mental health provider affiliated with the University of Minnesota Medical School. They operate in Woodbury, Edina, Maple Grove, and Chaska and will soon open a Rochester clinic, also designed by Pope Architects. The Rochester out-patient clinic will be open to the public in a week, reports KMIT TV.
Pope Architects works closely with PrairieCare on their facilities and takes care with architectural design to best serve patients. Pope Architects takes pride in the PrairieCare facilities. “Patients and families receiving care at PrairieCare will notice the therapeutic and awe-inspiring architectural designs that have become the trademark of the organization’s treatment settings,” states the PrairieCare blog.