Dozens of health care workers, law enforcement officers, and representatives of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina celebrated Southeastern Integrated Care’s new behavioral health urgent care in Lumberton on Friday.
When it opens on April 27, the facility at 105 Farmbrook Drive will provide 24-hour care to adults and children over 4 who are experiencing a mental health or substance misuse crisis.
“We believe that this is a place where someone comes in at their worst moment in life and has a safe place to decompress and get the resources they need,” Anthony Grimaldi, chief innovation officer for Southeastern Integrated Care, told the crowd at a ribbon-cutting event.
Staff at the facility will aim to triage and assess patients within 15 minutes of their arrival, according to Aaryn McKenzie, Southern Integrated Care’s community engagement specialist.
Grimaldi said staff can provide up to 12 patients at a time with same-day services like treatment for mental health crises, assessments for substance use disorders, drug withdrawal management, and telehealth resources.
Anyone can access the services, even those without insurance, Grimaldi said. Almost 14% of Robeson County residents under 65 don’t have health insurance, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Grimaldi said the center should reduce the role of local hospitals like UNC Health Southeastern and Scotland Health Care System in treating patients experiencing behavioral health crises. Through partnerships with local emergency medical services and Southeastern Integrated Care’s mobile crisis units, he said the goal is to funnel patients away from emergency departments and to the urgent care center.
“Local hospitals probably see nine to 10 psychiatric patients a day walking into that emergency room,” Grimaldi said. “Most of those could be managed here to free up the capacity of the emergency room for other medical issues.”
In 2024, the emergency department in Robeson County recorded 919 visits for suicidal ideation, 609 for depression, and 908 for anxiety, according to the state’s mental health dashboard. These kinds of behavioral health emergencies are resource-intensive, said Renae Taylor, vice president and chief nursing officer at UNC Health Southeastern, because “patients often require closer monitoring, longer evaluation times, and multidisciplinary involvement to ensure safety and appropriate care.”
Staff at the new urgent care center can conduct initial evaluations for involuntary commitment assessments, Grimaldi said. The assessments, which typically occur in hospitals, often require law enforcement officers to wait hours with those being evaluated, Robeson County Sheriff Burnis Wilkins said.
Petitions for involuntary commitment increased in North Carolina between 2009 and 2021, according to data compiled by NC Health News. Under state law, anyone “who has knowledge of an individual who has a mental illness” and is a danger to themselves or others can ask a judge to put the person in custody and force them to be evaluated for treatment.
House Bill 307, also called Iryna’s Law, requires more people to undergo mental health assessments to determine if they should be involuntarily committed. Gov. Josh Stein signed the bill into law last year, following the fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte.
Since the law’s passage, health care and law enforcement officials told members of the House Select Committee on Involuntary Commitment and Public Safety that, without support, its provisions will overburden them. A report from the committee released this month outlines recommendations to improve the law’s implementation, including using telehealth to conduct mental health evaluations.
Wilkins said he hopes the new urgent care center will also reduce the number of people housed in the Robeson County Detention Center. The local jail is above capacity by over 100 people, many of whom struggle with mental health issues, according to Wilkins.
“We basically have become a mental health holding facility and a drug abuser holding facility,” Wilkins said, “so we need a location like this locally.”
The urgent care staff will also work closely with Lt. Hollis McNeil and Det. Jeremy Gerald of the sheriff’s office’s Substance Abuse Freedom & Education (SAFE) program. It’s one of several law enforcement-assisted diversion (LEAD) programs across the state that connect people suspected of low-level drug offenses with behavioral health treatment instead of putting them in jail.
“The days of just locking people up, that’s not the answer,” Wilkins said. “We’ve got to go beyond that. Putting people behind those bars is not the answer. You have to have some people that can reach them.”
Trillium Health Resources, a health plan and managed care organization that oversees Medicaid care in Robeson and 45 other counties, and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services provided $2 million to build the urgent care and cover its start-up costs. The money is part of a $16 million allocation from the state legislature to create or expand behavioral health urgent care facilities.
“At Trillium, we believe that care shouldn’t depend on where you live,” Cindy Ehlers, chief strategy and innovation officer, said during the ribbon-cutting event. “You should be able to get care no matter where you live, whether you’re in a rural community, or whether you’re in somewhere like Raleigh.”
Robeson County has few psychiatrists and psychologists to treat its 119,000 residents, according to the North Carolina Health Professions Data System. Many residents identified a need for more mental health and substance use recovery services in the county’s most recent community health needs assessment.
Robeson is among the eight North Carolina counties that opened a behavioral health urgent care in the last two years using Medicaid funding, NCDHHS spokesperson Summer Tonizzo said. The others were in Alamance, Buncombe, Caldwell, Haywood, Pitt, Rockingham, and Rowan counties. Tonizzo said five more in Cabarrus, Johnston, Lenoir, Vance, and Wake counties will open in the coming years.
Investments in behavioral health urgent care centers are part of an ongoing effort to improve access to behavioral health care across the state, particularly for those in the criminal justice system. In February, Stein issued an executive order calling for increased investment in treatment options.
“The goal is to make this a safe place for anybody to walk through the door,” Grimaldi said, “No judgment. You’ll get cared for immediately.”