The University Hospital of Pilsen in Czechia has constructed a new pavilion to house its Psychiatric Clinic. This enables it to provide more specialised and highly specialised health and social services for patients with mental disabilities or psychiatric problems in the region.
Czechia’s University Hospital of Pilsen expands, improves psychiatric care
- 17 December 2020
We wanted to expand outpatient care and increase comfort for mentally ill patients who first need to be appeased and can only then be re-examined and treated. We are glad that the pavilion is here in Lochotín, because there is an urgent medicine centre, and patients with somatic problems can visit other departments. Everything is basically within walking distance.
The new pavilion has increased the clinic’s capacity from 76 to 90 beds. This guarantees at least 20 beds for urgent inpatient psychiatric care per 100 000 patients in the Pilsen region. New job openings have been created to ensure that there are enough permanent staff members to care for the extra patients.
Improved care
The new building has been designed and equipped to provide urgent inpatient care for diagnostic or medical services, nursing or counselling, as well as outpatient, preventive, crisis, rehabilitation and psychosocial care. Patients needing urgent treatment can be admitted any time of day, seven days a week.
The new pavilion is part of a larger reform of psychiatric care at the hospital. It allows the hospital to offer all standard medical services in its field, including psycho-pharmaceutical medication and psycho-therapeutic procedures. Increasing capacity goes hand in hand with improving health and social services.
In doing so, the hospital is further humanising and destigmatising psychiatric care, improving the comfort and quality of life of its patients.
A large clinic for the regions
The University Hospital of Pilsen is the fourth-largest medical facility in Czechia. Its facilities are in two districts of the city of Pilsen: Bory and Lochotín. The new pavilion is in Lochotín and is the only facility in the region that provides urgent psychiatric care. Residents of neighbouring regions, especially North and South Bohemia, Karlovy Vary and parts of Central Bohemia, rely on its services.
In recent years, the number of hospitalisations and outpatients has increased steadily, to the point where several wards reached full capacity, forcing the hospital to postpone or cancel pending hospitalisations. This new facility responds to this need for increased capacity.
The project was scheduled to be completed in December 2020, but has been delayed to at least June 2021.
Total investment and EU funding
Total investment for the project “Construction of a new pavilion of the Psychiatric Clinic in the University Hospital in Pilsen” is EUR 12 393 218, with the EU’s European Regional Development Fund contributing EUR 10 534 235 through the “Integrated” Operational Programme for the 2014-2020 programming period. The project falls under the priority “Jobs, growth and investment.”