Standing just outside what he hopes will soon be a new psychiatric hospital for south suburban youths in Tinley Park, Dr. Chris Higgins talked of what he said is an all-too-common scenario for adolescents seeking mental health treatment.

With few inpatient beds locally set aside for kids needing mental health services, Higgins said that waits for “adolescents and their families in an ER on a gurney for 20 hours” are not uncommon.

Higgins’ MIRA Neuro-Behavioral Health Center is awaiting state approval to convert a 40,000-square-foot building at 6775 Prosperi Drive into a 30-bed acute care psychiatric hospital.

He also is founder and clinical director for Palos Behavioral Health Professionals, a psychology practice that has locations in Burr Ridge, Mokena and Palos Heights.

Standing with Higgins during a news conference Tuesday, state Sen. Michael Hastings, D-Tinley Park, said there is “a need right here in our community” for the outpatient and inpatient services the center would provide.

Hazel Crest Police Chief Mitchell Davis noted that treatment at an early age is beneficial, noting that jails are “our No. 1 mental health institutions.”

“We’re going to have to deal with them one way or another,” he said.

In its application with the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board, MIRA noted that no other area hospital, with the exception of Ingalls in Harvey, offers inpatient mental health care for children and adolescents.

Too often, Higgins said, adolescent patients end up being admitted to hospitals far outside the south suburbs, making it difficult on their families. The Tinley Park site would offer a “safe place, closer to home,” he said.

Hastings said that the closing a few years ago of the Tinley Park Mental Health Center also reduced available resources for adolescents seeking treatment of mental health issues.

MIRA filed its application with the state board in March and it is scheduled to vote on the request at its Sept. 17 meeting.

Higgins said that the hospital could be operating by next May.

MIRA plans to convert a building that is now being used by CTF Illinois, a nonprofit that assists people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Programs now being held there are being relocated to four new sits in Crestwood, Orland Park, South Holland and Tinley Park, according to Mary Pat Ambrosino, chief executive of CTF.

MIRA said it is investing $5.1 million in the project, including $1.9 million for the purchase of the building and land, south of Interstate 80 and directly east of Oak Park Avenue.

MIRA plans to offer inpatient and outpatient services, with inpatient care offered 24 hours, daily. Of the 30 beds, 25 are being earmarked for adolescent patients and five for children, according to the application.

In its 300-plus page state application, MIRA said that “appropriate outpatient care cannot be accomplished without first helping children and adolescents become safe, secure and stable in an inpatient environment.”

The facility’s staff will include nurses, social workers and psychiatrists, Higgins said.

Higgins said plans for such a facility began being put together about nine years ago. The name MIRA, he said, is the root of the word “miracle,” and that he and other partners in the project thought it would take a miracle to see the concept come to fruition.

MIRA said that in calculating the number of beds available for inpatient care of people with mental illness, state healthcare regulators don’t differentiate between beds set aside for adults and those for children or adolescent.

By that measure, the company said in its application, it appears the south and southwest suburbs have an abundance of available beds, but the opposite is true as far as availability of inpatient care for youth.

Recently, Rush University Medical Center in Chicago decided to close its 15-bed unit for children and adolescents with behavioral health issues.

The hospital said the closing was due in part to lack of demand, and that it would focus its attention on outpatient mental health programs for children and adolescents.

MIRA estimates, in its application, that it will admit about 1,200 patients in 2022, and by 2024 reach a utilization level that exceeds the state required minimum of 85%.

Several south and southwest suburban high school and elementary school officials filed letters of support with the state, as did some mayors and medical personnel, saying the region would benefit from the project.

George Borrelli, medical director for emergency services at Palos Hospital in Palos Heights, and William Walsh, medical director of the emergency department at Little Company of Mary Hospital and Health Centers in Evergreen Park, submitted letters of support.

In his letter, Walsh said MIRA’s proposed center is a “much needed facility” and that when hospital personnel at Little Company “determine that a child needs further psychiatric care we often run in to obstacles.”

“While our average patient spends 3-5 hours in our emergency department, the average child with a psychiatric problem that needs placement in an inpatient facility may spend 3 times that” in the department," Walsh wrote.

That “delays them getting the care they need in an appropriate environment and prevents us from using that bed for another patient,” he wrote.

Linda Vollinger, president of the board of directors of the Illinois Association of School Nurses, said school nurses back the project.

Vollinger, school nurse at Stagg High School in Palos Hills, wrote that area hospitals do “not have the appropriate clinical resources to service children and adolescents” requiring inpatient care.

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