Officials eye plan to divert drunks to detox

Erin Neff and Launce Rake

Friday, Oct. 27, 2000 | 11:11 a.m.

With just 206 emergency room beds for 1.6 million residents, not counting the influx of tourists each week, Las Vegas area hospitals know critical care is in critical condition.

Beyond building new facilities, local health officials think there's another way to free up some of those beds.

Weed out the drunks.

On Thursday, two regional government boards agreed that chronic public inebriates need to be addressed directly due to the $3 million they cost local hospitals last year and the numerous beds they occupy each day while sobering up.

The Clark County District Board of Health passed, without dissent, a variance required to transport "the chronic public inebriate" to the Westcare facility for admission to the detox shelter.

According to Dr. Donald Kwalick, the district's chief health officer, one out of three inebriated patients picked up by Metro Police now go to a detox shelter, but the other two-thirds go to a hospital.

That takes ambulances out of service for up to two hours, and hospital beds out of service for up to 20 hours, the period that could be necessary for a patient to metabolize the alcohol, Kwalick said in a memo to the board.

Most inebriated patients just need to be under observation, Kwalick said.

And as a result, University Medical Center Emergency Room Dr. Ben Bobrow said that keeps staff away from patients waiting in the lobby with ailments as serious as kidney stones and broken bones.

"Personally, it's very frustrating that night after night we have very sick patients in our hallways and our waiting rooms," Bobrow told the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition during its monthly board meeting Thursday at Las Vegas City Hall.

The regional planning board voted unanimously to have staff study regional solutions to overall problems with emergency room overcrowding, including chronic drunk and mental health patient factors.

Davette Shea, an emergency supervisor at UMC, said chronic inebriates and mental health patients can occupy 30 to 40 percent of the region's emergency beds on any given day.

Richard Steinberg, chief executive officer of Westcare, told the regional planning coalition that his facility treats 4,000 chronic inebriates annually through its 25 beds.

An additional 25 beds for a "sobering shelter" are proposed to help reduce the numbers of drunks who still wind up in emergency beds. However, funding for that addition has not yet been found.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, vice chairman of the regional planning board, asked whether some drunks could simply be taken to jail.

Metro Police Officer Tracy Smith said that police often try to take drunks who have also committed a crime, like trespassing or disorderly conduct, to jail. However, she said, nurses at the jail often refuse to accept the drunk prisoner and order officers to take the person to Westcare or to the nearest hospital.

Goodman recommended the task force that examined chronic public inebriates should also take a close look at the mental health patient issues.

The Las Vegas area has just 10 intake beds for mental health patients.