The Royal launches Ottawa's only urgent mental health clinic

Construction of The Royal’s mental health urgent care clinic is officially complete, filling a need left vacant more than 25 years ago.

The hospital officially unveiled the Minto Greenberg Urgent Care Clinic on Sept. 18, the only centre of its kind in eastern Ontario providing urgent, specialized care for adults experiencing a mental health crisis.

Cara Vaccarino, president and CEO of The Royal, said the clinic would officially open on Sept. 21, but they’ve had great success since their soft launch in April.

“We’ve had close to 700 visits already, so obviously we’re filling a demand,” Vaccarino said in an interview.

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The new clinic marks a return of urgent mental health care after The Royal’s emergency department was shut down in 2000 as part of a major hospital restructuring. In the decades since, Vaccarino said patients have been left without specialized urgent care, leaving them to access regular emergency departments across the city in moments of crisis.

Those departments are dealing with their own capacity issues, and she said half the patients dealing with a mental health crisis usually leave without being seen. This isn’t ideal, she said, since 62 per cent of the people they’ve seen so far have presented with suicidal ideations.

The new clinic will provide those patients with specialized and urgent care, and help ease the pressure placed on emergency departments and primary care physicians who have, until now, managed the majority of all mental health cases in the city.

“It was really an imperative that The Royal step up and lean into their accountabilities in this way and do our fair share,” Vaccarino said.

The hospital’s new urgent care clinic will operate as a walk-in and will take referrals from other hospitals and physicians in eastern Ontario. It is located in a repurposed former office space at The Royal on Carling Avenue, and includes a direct entrance from the front of the building.