Expanded Virtual, Intensive, Short-Term Mental Health Care for RI, MA adults at Brown University Health

Blended Program Offers More Specialized, Expanded Services

Brown University Health has brought together its adult partial hospital programs at Newport and Rhode Island Hospitals to form the Brown University Health Partial Hospital Program. Fully virtual, the evidence-based treatment delivers intensive, short-term mental health care to adults across Southeastern New England.

A partial hospital program (PHP) offers a highly structured form of outpatient treatment for individuals who need more support than traditional therapy/psychiatry outpatient visits but do not require inpatient hospitalization.

In combining the programs, Brown Health is able to offer enhanced individualized care and additional high-quality treatment options for patients accessing the system’s multidisciplinary psychiatric care. The blended treatment addresses a wide range of patient concerns while improving access to integrated specialty care in areas such as:

• Trauma
• Dual Diagnosis; and
• Emotion Dysregulation
• Young Adults

“By combining our programs, we’re able to offer patients more specialized options together with a broader range of therapies, without sacrificing the personal, team-based care they have come to count on,” said Sarah Schmidhofer, MD, director of the adult partial hospital program at Brown University Health. “Having all these services under one roof makes it easier for patients to get the right help at the right time.”

The streamlined program features:

• General Track – for a wide range of mental health concerns
• Young Adult Track
• Trauma Track
• Co-occurring Disorders Track (addiction/dual diagnosis); and
• Building Emotional Awareness and Regulation Track – for emotion dysregulation and related disorders, such as borderline personality disorder

“This combined program will include the same treatment Newport Hospital is known for which addresses mental health and substance use/addiction together in a supportive, strength-based recovery model with Dialectical Behavioral Therapy at its foundation. Patients in this co-occurring track will continue to benefit from learning recovery skills in a nonjudgmental community of their peers which helps to foster mutual learning and personal growth while remaining in their home environment,” said Jennifer Fletcher, LMHC.

“Merging our programs into a single unified system allows ease of access to care and the ability to more efficiently connect individuals with specialty care options to best suit their needs,” said Hannah Herc, PhD, division director of the adult partial hospital program. “We are excited about the breadth of care options we can offer the community, as well as the depth of experience and knowledge our providers collectively bring.”

Individuals who are appropriate for this level of care include those:

• Who are experiencing significant impairment in multiple areas of daily life,
• With acute symptoms of psychiatric illness,
• Who may have suicidal or homicidal thoughts but are not at imminent risk of acting on these dangerous thoughts.

Participants must be willing and able to: 

• Attend sessions virtually in a secure and private location in order to protect the privacy of others in the program
• Have access to WIFI or internet
• Be physically located in Massachusetts or Rhode Island for the duration of care
• Attend the program daily (both groups, individual sessions), Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Engage in both individual and group treatment.

The average time commitment is generally two to three weeks.

All referrals for partial hospital care, including patient self-referrals, may be directed to the Brown University Health partial hospital program and can be made by calling (401) 444-3748 or visiting https://www.brownhealth.org/centers-services/adult-partial-hospital-program.

About Brown University Health

Formed in 1994, Brown University Health is a not-for-profit health system based in Providence, R.I. comprised of three teaching hospitals of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University: Rhode Island Hospital and its Hasbro Children’s Hospital; The Miriam Hospital; and Bradley Hospital, the nation’s first psychiatric hospital for children; Newport Hospital, a community hospital offering a broad range of health services; Gateway Healthcare, the state’s largest provider of community behavioral health care; Brown Health Medical Group, the largest multi-specialty practice in Rhode Island; and Brown Health Medical Group Primary Care, a primary care driven medical practice. Brown University Health teaching hospitals are among the country’s top recipients of research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The hospitals received over $145 million in external research funding in fiscal 2023. All Brown University Health-affiliated partners are charitable organizations that depend on support from the community to provide programs and services.