A 20-bed adolescent psychiatric unit River Region Medical Center plans for the vacant second floor of its West Campus on North Frontage Road will come up in March for approval by the Mississippi State Department of Health, agency officials said.

If a certificate of need to open the facility is granted by the state, 8,855 square feet of space on the second floor’s east wing will be renovated into two day rooms, two group rooms, a seclusion room, a dining room and a nurses’ station, according to an application filed in May with the agency’s Division of Health Planning and Resource Development.

The Board of Health expects findings and recommendations from a hearing in November on the project to be addressed on an unspecified day in March.

Approval of the project would allow all of the hospital’s behavioral health services to be housed in the former Vicksburg Medical Center, already home to two psychiatric units on the third floor for adults 18 to 54 and for those 55 and older.

“The adolescent psychiatric unit will allow River Region to add a key service line to our current behavioral health unit,” said Glenn T. Carney, River Region’s chief operating officer. “So, we can provide a full array of behavioral health services from adolescent to geriatric care for our community.”

Carney said a “multidisciplinary team” will work in the unit, led by a psychiatrist and staffed with new hires for nursing, social work, activity therapists and others. At completion, the unit will require about 16 full-time equivalent personnel at an annual cost of $1,082,640, according to the application.

River Region based its application to build the facility on a variety of factors, such as a stated “void” of inpatient psychiatric services for adolescents in its primary service area of Warren, Issaquena, Sharkey, Yazoo, Hinds, Claiborne and Copiah counties. The application mentions 12 beds licensed in Hinds County at University Hospital & Clinics, but emphasizes completion of the project at the West Campus “will provide a much-needed treatment option for troubled adolescents in Warren County and the surrounding areas.”

In 2001, MSDH approved a similar facility for Brentwood Health Management, called Children’s Hospital of Vicksburg. The $4 million unit was to include 20 beds for treatment of child and adolescent psychiatric conditions and 60 beds for psychiatric residential treatment. The agency revoked the approval in 2007, citing inaction on the part of the Flowood-based psychiatric care provider to advance the project. The decision was upheld in Hinds County Chancery Court in 2008. The Mississippi Supreme Court in 2010 declined to hear an appeal of the ruling. In November, the agency OK’d a certificate of need to transfer 15 adolescent psychiatric beds to Brentwood from Diamond Grove Center, located in Louisville, Miss.

River Region, one of 126 hospitals operated by Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems, has 261 general acute care beds, 40 adult psychiatric beds, 28 adult chemical dependency beds, 12 adolescent chemical dependency beds and 31 long-term care beds which are temporarily de-licensed, the application says.