The expansion of the Mental Health and Addictions Urgent Crisis Centre at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare is continuing to show strong demand less than a year after the service moved to 24-hour operation.
An update was provided Wednesday at the hospital’s board meeting, which showed that since the centre began operating around the clock in July 2025, they have seen nearly 900 people during overnight hours alone.
Between January of 2025 and March of this year, the centre recorded more than 4,600 visits, with more than 3,300 of those visits coming after the 24/7 expansion.
Since January of last year, the centre has also completed more than 700 addiction consults, around 1,060 psychiatric consults, and transitioned 385 people into withdrawal management programs.
The program serves people over the age of 16 experiencing mental health or addiction crises who may not require emergency department care, which in turn helps reduce pressure on local hospitals.
Kevin Matte, Director of Crisis and Addiction Services at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, says they were seeing roughly 120 people per month before service expansion and are now seeing well over 400 very consistently.
“The need is there, especially when you’re talking about after-hour supports. We just went full 24/7 for walk-in services in the summer of last year. So before that there was really nowhere to go for people looking for mental health support after hours besides the emergency department. And now we’re seeing well over 100 people a month utilize that service. “
He says psychiatry consults have increased immensely due to an increase in supports.
“Now we have on-call psychiatry seven days a week every day of the year and their operating hours are now 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and then they’re actually physically on site Monday through Friday as well and so it’s just really increased our capacity to be able to take referrals from the emergency department and just take more referrals in general.”
Matte says the hospital is working on a journal publication of the results of the program so far.
“What’s really unique about this is all those specialized services under one roof open 24/7 and it’s not something you see everywhere else and so there’s not a lot of literature on the outcomes of it and we’re seeing some really great results and so for us it’s adding to the literature and hopefully building a model that other places around the province can replicate.”
Officials say nearly 60 per cent of clients visiting the centre have active substance use concerns, while about 30 per cent return within six months for continued support services.
The cetre, located beside the emergency department at Windsor Regional Hospital Ouellette Campus, has also helped ease strain on first responders, with approximately 250 police and EMS drop-offs redirected away from the emergency department since January 2025.
Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare has been given an 18-month period by the Ministry of Health to continue collecting data before applying for permanent annual funding for the centre.