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Temple’s Episcopal hospital is expanding its emergency department and crisis response center in a $12.6 million project

An expansion to the emergency department is expected to open this summer, while a larger crisis responses center will open in the fall.

John Robison, executive director at Episcopal Campus of Temple University Hospital, speaks at the ribbon-cutting event for its emergency department expansion on Friday.
John Robison, executive director at Episcopal Campus of Temple University Hospital, speaks at the ribbon-cutting event for its emergency department expansion on Friday.Read moreTyger Williams / Staff Photographer

Temple University Hospital’s Episcopal Campus is adding 10 beds for patients experiencing medical emergencies, part of $12.6 million in construction projects coming online in the coming months.

The emergency department at the community hospital in Kensington will grow from 19 beds to 29 beds. This will allow Episcopal to see more patients who arrive to the hospital’s doorsteps.

Currently, the ED gets so busy some days that the hospital must send patients to other facilities, said John Robison Episcopal’s executive director, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday to highlight the expansion.

“People who come here, we want to take care of them,” Robison said.

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Construction on the ED expansion is a couple weeks away from concluding, and the new beds will open to patients after final inspections from the state later this summer.

Temple also has been building a new crisis response center, offering 24-hour emergency services for patients experiencing behavioral and mental health crises. The new center will be able to accommodate more than 80 patients at a time, nearly a fourfold increase from the hospital’s current capacity.

The center’s $7 million construction cost is being funded in part through a $3 million grant from Pennsylvania’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program, which supports construction projects for community services.

The larger crisis response center will allow Episcopal to improve patient care and safety, said Luciano Rasi, Episcopal’s director of behavioral health.

Patients arrive at Temple’s crisis center with wide-ranging issues. These include people with anxiety looking for counseling resources, people with substance use disorder seeking opioid withdrawal treatment, and people brought in by police involuntarily in need of care for severe mental illness. Currently, all of these patients are treated in close proximity to each other.

“Right now, we have too many people in a small space,” Rasi said. “And that’s not safe.”

The new crisis center will have its own entrance, so its patients will no longer need to come in through the ED, said Yvette Valiente, senior director of facility services at Episcopal.

The new crisis center is expected to open to patients in November.