Numbers can jolt.

Here’s a cold one: the state of Washington ranks 48th in the United States in terms of providing access to in-patient psychiatric care, ahead only of Louisiana and Alabama.

By counting how many in-patient psychiatry beds a region has per 100,000 population, one arrives at an average of 28 beds throughout Pacific Northwest per 100,000 population, and across Washington State 8.9 beds.

In South King and Pierce counties, the ratio drops to a dismal 2.8 beds per 100,000 souls.

“That’s not a lot of beds,” William Robertson, president and chief executive officer of Tacoma-based MultiCare Health System, commented to City Council Monday night at Auburn City Hall.

What’s more, Robertson said, the state of Washington lags behind the rest of the country in terms of offering the necessary, full continuum of ambulatory and clinic-based behavioral health services.

Addressing that deficiency in south King and Pierce counties has brought CHI Franciscan and MultiCare Health systems together to build a 120-bed, in-patient, adult psychiatric hospital with crisis stabilization beds on the Allenmore Hospital campus in Tacoma.

The total project cost is about $60 million, divided between $44 million in construction costs and $16 million in startup costs.

Construction plans have already been approved, and the project has met state approval.

Upon completion, Robertson said, the hospital will add to the capacity at MultiCare Auburn Medical Center, at Tacoma General and St. Joseph Hospital.

“This region will go from being one of the least-served regions, from a behavioral health perspective, to one of the best-served regions,” Robertson said.

Backing the project is a coalition of labor, business, law enforcement, education and government from South King to Pierce County.

And perhaps, as revealed on Monday, the City of Auburn, from which the coalition has asked for $400,000, a figure based on population and a general overlay of the service area.

“We are No. 1 in not having enough hospital beds for mental health patients, number one in the state, and arguably, within that same stratosphere, across the United States,” said Scott Thompson, Media Relations Specialist for Marketing and Communications with CHI Franciscan Health.

“What that means is that our citizens who face these crises, estimated to be one out of every five, we are serving them in our emergency rooms, driving up the cost of care for all of us that have to go there, and they’re not getting the (proper) degree of treatment,” Thompson said. “It means that you are paying enormous amounts of money to jail those citizens, and they are still not receiving treatment, and that is costing taxpayers millions and millions of dollars.”