Friday, Sept. 19, 2003 | 9:24 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- Mentally ill people are still clogging the emergency rooms at hospitals in Clark County, a legislative study committee was told Thursday.
Carlos Brandenburg, administrator of the state Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services, said 61 people in emergency rooms in the Las Vegas Valley on Thursday waiting to get into the state's mental health institution in Las Vegas.
The average wait is two and a half days, he told the Nevada Mental Health Plan Implementation Commission at its first meeting. The commission was created to incorporate many of the recommendations of the Presidential Commission on Mental Health.
The commission, led by state Sen. Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, will hold its second hearing Oct. 9 in Las Vegas, at which time it will address the issues of emergency mental health care, the homeless and suicides.
There have been complaints from hospitals that their emergency rooms have been flooded with mentally ill people, inebriates and people with drug overdoses. The care of these people delays treatment of those with physical ills or injuries, the complaints said.
Brandenburg noted that the Legislature approved the construction of a 150-bed psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas, but it won't be ready until 2005 at the earliest.
The Legislature also authorized a mobile unit of workers to visit emergency rooms and handle the mentally ill cases. Brandenburg said that six-person team won't be fully staffed until January.
James R. Osti of the Southern Nevada Mental Health Task Force said nobody knows how many mentally ill patients are in need of services. But he said the 61 patients cited by Brandenburg are "just the tip of the iceberg."
Osti said records of ambulance services in Clark County show that about 50 such people a day are taken to the 10 hospitals in Clark County.
He said many of these people are released after the crisis has passed but that they still need mental health services.
WestCare, which operates a triage program for the mentally ill in Las Vegas, was discussed this week at a meeting of the Legislative Interim Finance Committee, which declined, for the time being, to allocate another $200,000 to the triage center.
The state contributes $472,672 through the state Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Abuse and $165,940 from the tobacco settlement.
The budget for the center is $3.8 million with one-third coming from the hospitals in Southern Nevada and one-third from local governments. The hospitals and the local government want the state to contribute one-third.
The state would have to kick in another $600,000 to meet that goal, but legislators said the state is short of money. The finance committee put off a decision until November.
Richard Steinberg, president and chief executive officer of WestCare, said more than 3,000 people have been diverted to the center from hospital emergency rooms and jails through Aug. 31 this year.
He said his company might make a decision within days as to whether to cut back or end the program.
"To have the state put it in another study group, when they've already studied it ... really puts the program in danger," he said Wednesday.
"It's a shame because it's the first time the cities, the county and all of the hospitals in Southern Nevada worked together on such a project."
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