The Unity Center for Behavioral Health, Portland's 1 ½-year-old psychiatric emergency room, is no longer accepting most new patients while it works to address problems raised by a state investigation into employee and patient safety.

In a move that could cause backups at hospital emergency rooms, the 100-bed center has told ambulances and area hospitals to no longer bring or refer patients to Unity.

The facility will accept walk-in patients only for now, said Legacy Health spokesman Brian Terrett.

Terrett said he isn't sure how long the suspension will last. Unity is using the time to train nurses on new safety protocols, he said. He did not specify what those protocols are.

Unity opened in January 2017 as the city's solution to long waits at hospitals for psychiatric beds for people in mental health crisis.

Unity's staff and management are under scrutiny after an Oregon Health Authority investigation revealed complaints about assaults on staff and other patients. Unity officials have said they will be transparent about what sparked the investigation and what it leads to after it is over, but has not done so thus far.

Separately, two nurses have filed lawsuits alleging they were fired because they raised concerns about safety.

The Oregon Safety and Health Division found in March that Unity had violated four safety rules and regulations, which included ignoring or not documenting some of the roughly 300 assaults suffered by employees in the first seven months of operation.

Unity leaders think that the staff will be able to adapt to new protocols more quickly and smoothly if there aren't new people coming in, Terrett said. Once the training is over, the center will again accept people who arrive by ambulance, transfers from other hospitals or who have been directed to Unity by a doctor.

In the meantime, Terrett said people who need immediate mental health care will go to area hospitals.

"There's still the ability to treat those patients at those locations," Terrett said.

However, four psychiatric facilities run by the major hospital systems shut down when Unity opened, with the idea Unity would handle their caseloads. The 24-hour center now incorporates services for Legacy Health, Oregon Health & Science University, Adventist Health and Kaiser Permanente.

Mental health advocate Jason Renaud said that the lack of clear communication from Unity or the Oregon Health Authority about the redirection of services could be confusing and harmful to patients.

"Emergency rooms are not a good place for people in a psychiatric emergency," Renaud said.

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger