New psychiatric care offices open on Route 24

Responding to a serious lack of mental health professionals in Sussex County, a Pennsylvania psychiatrist has opened new offices where patients can receive same-day evaluations.

With offices at the Beebe Health Campus on Route 24,  Dr. David Kalkstein joins with a partnering psychiatrist, clinical social workers and nurse practitioners to launch a private practice and center that offers the Psychiatric Evaluation Program he helped to develop.

PEP centers provide same-day evaluations, individual and group therapy sessions as well as medication management under one roof, in one office, Kalkstein said.

“The whole idea is that we will be able to provide same-day evaluations,” he said. “We take all insurances so that allows all people to make sure they can be seen.”

A 2009 study by the University of Delaware reported only one psychiatrist for every 27,431 residents in Sussex County and a shortage of mental health professionals in the region.

Wait times for appointments with psychiatrists have typically ranged anywhere from two days to eight weeks in Sussex County, research shows, with primary- care physicians taking on much of the patient load and providing medication management better suited for psychiatrists.

As one of the only private practices in the area, Kalkstein said he sees adolescents and adult patients from all over Sussex County, from Milford to Millsboro and Fenwick Island and everywhere in between.

“I know there is a need here,” Kalkstein and Associates partnering psychiatrist Dr. Ranga Ram said. “We wanted to do this more as a service, but it is good for us as well.”

Receiving care for mental illness has often meant a long series of appointments, sometimes in different places, Kalkstein said. With the office and program designed to condense the process of evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of mental health needs in one place, a PEP center is able to provide faster, more efficient mental health care.

“With the PEP program same-day evaluations, patients have the option of routine office treatment here or in-office intensive treatment with groups or an increased frequency of individual treatments,” he said. “As far as we have researched, this is the first of its kind in an office setting.”

As the Delaware Office Director for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Matt Stehl agreed the new office is well placed to serve residents of Sussex County.

“Downstate Delaware is desperate,” Stehl said. “It is already an underserved area as far as psychiatric needs go, so the opening is filling a need for mental health care.”

For more information on the PEP Program and new offices of Kalkstein and Associates, in the Beebe Health Campus off John J. Williams Highway, visit www.pep-center.com or call 302-827-2932. The office is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday.