Idaho’s second state-funded mental health crisis center will open on Dec. 9 in Coeur d’Alene.

The Northern Idaho Crisis Center will be located on the Kootenai Health campus at 2195 Ironwood Court, northwest of the main hospital complex, in Coeur d’Alene.

The 2,200-square-foot center will have 10 beds for men and 10 for women and will serve adults from Idaho’s 10 northern counties who need help with behavioral health or substance abuse issues, says Don Robinson, a former FBI agent who has been hired as the center’s crisis and intervention services manager.

Patients will receive care for up to 24 hours, and the center’s staff will be trained to assess patients’ needs and refer them to appropriate resources before they leave the facility, Robinson says.

Behavioral health crises include episodes of suicidal thoughts and major depression, Robinson says, adding such conditions commonly are intertwined with drug and alcohol abuse.

All patients will be admitted voluntarily, Robinson says.

“Anyone in crisis who would be on a law-enforcement hold will go directly to the emergency department and get assessed and stabilized through that process,” he says. “If someone has committed a crime, they’re going to jail, mentally ill or not.”

The crisis center, however, will serve people with behavioral health issues who otherwise would end up in the criminal justice system or the emergency department just to be off the streets, Robinson says.

In the last 15 months, more than 3,500 behavioral health patients from those northern Idaho counties went to emergency departments, and only 43 were admitted for inpatient care.

The rest were released back into the community.

“Those are the people we’re looking for,” Robinson says. “We’re looking to address gaps out there.”

Idaho Health Partners, a recently formed coalition with members from Kootenai Health, Panhandle Health District, and Heritage Health, is doing much of the initial planning and development for the center.

Kootenai Health is the Coeur d’Alene-based full-service health network with its flagship 254-bed Kootenai Health hospital just southwest of the Interstate 90-U.S. 95 interchange.

The Panhandle Health District is the northernmost of seven Idaho health districts, with a board appointed by county commissioners representing Kootenai, Bonner, Shoshone, Benewah, and Boundary counties.

Heritage Health is a nonprofit community health network serving residents of Coeur d’Alene and surrounding communities regardless of their ability to pay.

Members of the local behavioral health community and others offering assistance to people in crisis, also will provide services at the center, Robinson says.

He says the center will have a staff of 15 to 17 people. The facility will be open year-round and at all hours.

During each shift, the staff will include a mental-health professional, a registered nurse, a certified nurse assistant, and security personnel, he says.

Kootenai Health will operate the facility under a two-year contract for $1.5 million per year.

“At the end of the first two-year period, we have to develop and present a sustainability plan,” Robinson says. “The Legislature will continue to fund it at some level, but the intent is for this to be a community-based effort.”

The Legislature also allocated one-time funding of $200,000 for set-up costs for the facility.

The set-up funding has been augmented with discounts and in-kind donations from subcontractors and vendors, he says.

“Many incidental items are being donated, and we have broad-based community support,” Robinson says.

The Northern Idaho Crisis Center is the second such facility to be funded through the Idaho Legislature.

The state’s first crisis center opened in Idaho Falls last December.

That facility, named the Behavioral Health Community Crisis Center of East Idaho, had more than 700 patients in its first six months of operation, with only 33 needing referral to a higher-level care.

That represents a conservatively estimated savings of nearly $300,000 factoring in the emergency department and law-enforcement costs that would have been incurred had the center not been there, Robinson says.

“We think our savings are going to be higher based on the volumes we’re seeing in the emergency department and jail here,” he says.

More importantly, the goal of the center is to save lives, he says. “That’s really what it’s all about.”

Robinson had specialized as a hostage crisis negotiator and was the supervisory special agent of the FBI office in Coeur d’Alene from 2005 to 2012.

He says his new position requires some of the skills he used as a negotiator.

“I’m familiar with crisis de-escalation,” he says. “Applying it to health care as opposed to law enforcement will be the big change for me.”