State mental health facility opens

Friday, Aug. 13, 2004 | 10:54 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The state opens its renovated 28-bed mental health facility in Clark County today to try to relieve some of the overcrowding of hospital emergency rooms where mental patients are filling the beds.

Carlos Brandenburg, administrator of the state Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services, said the refurbished building on the campus of the Southern Nevada Mental Health Facility will accept five patients a day until it is filled. It is expected to be full on Wednesday.

His statement Thursday was made to the Legislative Interim Finance Committee, which allocated $500,000 from its emergency fund and told Brandenburg to come back in February when the Legislature meets to get the remaining $2.8 million.

Clark County declared an emergency in July when patients with mental problems were being warehoused in emergency rooms, even strapped to gurneys in hospital hallways, because the state did not have room for them in its 103-bed hospital. Patients with health problems were affected.

Brandenburg was given authority by the committee to hire 50 additional people to work in the unit on the campus of the Southern Nevada Mental Health Facility. Patients from the mental hospital who are near ready to return to the community will be transferred to the new unit freeing up some of the 103 beds at the psychiatric center for people waiting in emergency rooms around the valley.

As of Thursday morning, there were 63 patients in emergency rooms in Southern Nevada hospitals who were waiting for beds in the state hospital, Brandenburg said.

Those types of patients have been kept in the emergency rooms for several days because of the lack of beds.

Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, and Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, both suggested that some of the Las Vegas patients be moved to Reno, where there is also a state hospital for the mentally ill.

Brandenburg said 40 beds are vacant in a wing in the Reno mental hospital, but that wing is closed. Arberry said the state built this unit to be occupied. "We did not build it to be a vacant building," Arberry said.

Brandenburg said after the meeting that the most effective and efficient answer was to provide additional beds in Southern Nevada for the mentally ill. He said he would have to hire additional staff in Reno if the program was expanded to the north.

Committee members noted that the state prison transports inmates from prison to prison and said the hospital should be able to do the same thing. But others suggested it would be unwise to handle mentally unstable people in that way.

The division had originally asked for $1.9 million to run the supplemental program in Las Vegas through Feb. 28. The division also wanted $1.3 million more to carry it through the end of the fiscal year next summer.

But Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, suggested an allocation of only $500,000 because the emergency fund is down to $3.3 million and may need to pay for other things. The division can return to the Legislature in February to get the rest of the needed function.

Brandenburg said current staff at the hospital could work overtime to take in the first batch of patients until the new employees are hired. He estimated he facility won't be able to have a psychiatrist on the job for four to six months and will have to pay private psychiatrists $119 per hour to fill in until then.

Last year, the Legislature allocated $32 million to build a 150-bed psychiatric hospital to replace the present structure, but that won't be completed until 2006. The hospital will have room to expand by another 40 beds.

Brandenburg said the state could continue to use some of the present facilities if the new hospital becomes full.

State Human Resources Director Mike Willden said the budget approved in 2003 gave the division a 35 percent increase in funding "and we're still not getting the job done." He warned that the opening of the 28-bed center is not "the end of the crisis."

He said the division will be back in 2005 to ask for the funding to staff the new state hospital as well as for other needed expenditures. He said he wants to encourage private hospitals to have mental health wings. He said the Las Vegas area has lost 133 beds because hospitals have closed or reduced their bed counts.

Charter Hospital closed, and that marked the loss of 100 beds, and Valley and North Vista Hospitals each reduced their numbers of beds as well. Willden said the federal government, through Medicare, must allow funding of these projects.

Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said the mental health division has resisted recommendations in the past that it, rather than the emergency rooms, conduct the program to determine if the patient is medically cleared for admission to the state mental health facilities.

That would shortcut the time and reduce the back-up in mental patients waiting to be accepted for state treatment. Brandenburg said the division has not resisted the program but never had the money to do it.

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