Carter Hospital to Be Replaced
By Will Higgins, The Indianapolis Star
Jan. 12–The state has put out a call for bids to build a psychiatric hospital near the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, replacing Larue D. Carter Memorial Hospital.
It’s expected to cost $90 million to $100 million, Family and Social Services Administration Secretary Mitch Roob said Thursday.
Some details have yet to be worked out, such as how many beds the 207,000-square-foot hospital would have — from 110 to 164.
The request for proposals issued this week also seeks land on which to locate the hospital.
The state’s proposal calls for the hospital to be built on ground near Indiana University’s medical school and near Clarian Health Partners’ head trauma center.
The facility would be part of a neuro-science center, a partnership with IU’s medical school and Clarian Health Partners. According to the bid request, the hospital would be nestled among a medical office building, of about the same size as the hospital, to be built and run by Clarian; a 90,000-square-foot brain research center, built and run by Indiana University; and a parking garage for 1,500 to 2,000 cars.
“What we want is a confluence of neurology and psychiatry,” Roob said. “We’re investing a lot of money in this facility in trying to figure out a way to design a care model that will get folks better faster. We hope it will become a locus for research and development.”
Proposals are due Jan. 29. The construction is expected to be complete in three years.
Indianapolis’ existing state-run psychiatric hospital, Larue Carter, was built in the leafy 2600 block of Cold Spring Road as a veterans hospital, and it has room for up to 160 patients. But it is problematic, Roob said. “It’s hard to provide modern care in an old building,” he said, and with its more than 30 exits, patients wandering away have presented an “enormous problem.”
The move is the latest development in Indiana’s troubled mental health care system, which last year received a grade of D- from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (Indiana received F’s in infrastructure).
Larue D. Carter Memorial Hospital opened in 1952 and is one of five state-run psychiatric hospitals, not counting Logansport’s Isaac Ray Forensic Center, Indiana’s psychiatric hospital for criminals.
A new psychiatric hospital has been widely anticipated. The Indiana State Office Building Commission, under the previous administration of Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan, two years ago paid $4.9 million for a 19-acre tract near 16th Street and Stadium Drive, on Indianapolis’ Westside, for use as a construction site.
That ground was unsuitable because it was too far from the existing medical facilities, said Roob, who was appointed to head the FSSA by Kernan’s successor, Republican Mitch Daniels.
Roob said that ground likely would be sold. He said he did not know what would become of the ground occupied by Larue Carter.
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