West Central Georgia Regional Hospital                                                 

Evaluation and Treatment Units

Active psychiatric treatment and behavioral health and habilitation services is organized around functional need and/or disability and/or age group, and is provided as follows:

The Secure Units serve adult inpatients who are (1) placed here by Court Order as incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity, or (2) admitted for pretrial forensic evaluation requiring inpatient observation and/or treatment, and (3) hold order and other inpatients requiring higher security due to individual risk considerations.

AMH/ASU serve both adult mental health and adult crisis stabilization consumers. The AMH unit has a 16 bed capacity treating those consumers that require a longer period of hospital stay for stabilization. ASU operates a 20 bed unit for consumers requiring a shorter period of stay for stabilization and allows them to return to a less restrictive environment in the community.

Organization and Supervision of Units

Each client unit is under the supervision of a Unit Manager and a Nurse Manager. Each Unit Manager/Nurse Manager is responsible for the overall operations and services of the unit supervised. They are clinically trained individuals who have extensive experience in psychiatric hospital operations. The Unit Manager/Nurse Managers oversee all administrative operations of the unit. Their responsibilities include coordinating programs and activities, providing input to clinical Discipline Chiefs on the procedures and protocols, representing the unit on teams, ensuring all policies and procedures of the hospital are carried out appropriately, and reviewing/correcting environment of care needs.

The clinical disciplines of Medicine, Nursing, Forensic and Psychological Services, Social Work, and Activity Therapy have Discipline Chiefs who are responsible for employing, privileging, assigning and supervising professionals in their respective disciplines. The Discipline Chiefs are responsible for implementing performance improvement programs for professionals in their disciplines. This includes determination of the clinical competence of professionals, developing and assigning training that will ensure maintenance of skills and supervision of the professional performance of the practitioners in their disciplines. These responsibilities are performed through direct observations and interviews and using data from thorough reviews of medical records and other documentation, which reflects each practitioner's performance. The Discipline Chiefs complete annual performance evaluations on members of their disciplines based on the performance of the professional.

Each unit has one or more attending physicians who direct medical services for the unit and directs the treatment planning process. Medical specialties include psychiatry, internal medicine and advanced practice nurse.