Mental-health officials push for crisis center

Tuesday, July 28, 1998 | 10:58 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Building a $6.9 million crisis center to give emergency care to dangerously mentally ill people arrested by Las Vegas police is the top priority of state mental-health officials.

"It's imperative we have this," said Carlos Brandenburg, administrator of the Mental Hygiene and Mental Retardation Division. "I'm running out of room."

Brandenburg said the crisis center would have 20 beds for those who are severely mentally ill and who are a danger either to themselves or to the public.

He made his pitch Monday to the state Public Works Board, which started reviewing requests from state agencies for more than $600 million worth of new building construction. The board will make its recommendations in late August.

The University and Community College System wants $308 million and the state prison is proposing $104 million in construction projects for the 1999-2001 biennium. State officials are estimating there will be less than $200 million available for construction.

Brandenburg said there is currently a 10-bed facility for crisis patients who are held for up to three days, during which they are stabilized and usually released back to the street. This unit deflects crisis cases from beds in mental hospitals where the care is costly, he said.

The problem, Brandenburg said, is that the number of beds is inadequate and the facility on West Charleston Boulevard cannot be nationally accredited because of its condition. As a result, the state cannot collect money from Medicaid and Medicare for the treatment of patients there.

Resident psychiatrists from the University of Nevada Medical School cannot work at the crisis center because it doesn't have national certification from the Joint Accreditation Commission on Hospital Organizations, he said.

State Budget Director Perry Comeaux, who is chairman of the Public Works Board, told Brandenburg to detail the savings that could be achieved if the new center was built.

With the knowledge that funding is tight, Brandenburg proposed an alternative $5.8 million center that would not include offices for physicians and social workers.

The division is proposing nearly $16 million in building and maintenance projects for mental-health facilities in Clark County, including expanded administrative offices, new electronic door locks at various sites and new fencing and gates.

It also wants more than $4 million for Northern Nevada mental-health centers. Brandenburg said a new 90-bed hospital is ready to go to bid in December at the Mental Health Institute in Sparks. He added, however, that funding is needed to rehabilitate other buildings on the 33-acre parcel, which adjoins the Truckee River.

A 1995 study shows the buildings, which are some 30 to 40 years old, are structurally sound but need upgraded floors, windows and electrical and telephone systems.