LV planners OK mental hospital

Dan Kulin

Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 | 11:24 a.m.

A plan for a new state mental hospital that has been attacked by some neighbors was backed by the Las Vegas Planning Commission on Thursday and will go before the City Council next month.

But it may not matter whether the council supports the plan because the state can build the hospital without the city's approval.

Dan O'Brien, Public Works Board manager, said Thursday that the state does not need the city's permission to build the $32 million psychiatric hospital at Oakey and Jones boulevards. This is because the state first put a facility on the surrounding mental health campus there in 1969, and state law says the city would have power over that state property only if there was nothing there before 1971, O'Brien said.

O'Brien sent city officials a letter explaining the law and said Thursday that the state is going through the city's approval process as a courtesy and to get its involvement in what the facility will look like.

If the council votes against the plan, O'Brien said it would be up to the governor to decide whether to build the 190-bed mental hospital there anyway.

But opponents of the hospital hope they can convince the council to oppose the project, which they hope would throw the matter back to the Legislature, which approved funding for the project.

During a Thursday night public hearing on the project, 18 people spoke in favor of it and 21 spoke against it. The commission was also presented with a petition signed by 511 people against the planned hospital.

Both supporters and opponents agree the hospital is needed, but they disagree on where it should go and how big it should be.

The proposed hospital would replace a 103-bed mental hospital that has been open for about 30 years on adjacent property.

Some opponents also say the new hospital would clear the way for the state to convert the old hospital, a few hundred yards away, into an institution for the criminally insane. They argue the new hospital should go on the outskirts of the Las Vegas Valley, away from residential areas with many schools like the Oakey and Jones area and the site of the planned hospital should be used to expand the Community College of Southern Nevada.

O'Brien said any new hospital for the criminally insane would not go on the property at Oakey and Jones, but opponents didn't believe him.

"They're saying it will be for Alzheimer's patients," hospital opponent Sue Brna said. "But they'll change their mind when they get that new one and that one is empty."

Brna is a board member for the Desert Inn Homeowners Association, which is one of six neighborhood groups around the hospital site that have joined to try to defeat the proposed hospital, and are acting under the name "Sensible Citizens Against Local Prison."

The Planning Commission voted 4-1 Thursday to approve the hospital plan. Commissioner Byron Goynes voted against the plan after saying he thinks the hospital will hurt the surrounding neighborhood. Other commissioners said that while they may oppose putting the hospital at Oakey and Jones, their decision Thursday was whether the construction plan presented to them was a good one, and not whether the hospital should go there.

The City Council is expected to vote on the plan on March 17.

Following the vote, supporter Diane Lyles said, "I'm elated. It's an answer to my prayers."

Lyles asked commissioners to approve the plan because without additional beds many of the mentally ill will be on the streets.

Jonna Triggs, director of Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services, which oversees the existing psychiatric hospital, told the commission that the additional 87 beds are sorely needed. She said the current lack of psychiatric beds is being felt at area hospitals.

For example, Triggs has said that typically 35 to 40 people are waiting in area emergency rooms for a bed to open up at the mental hospital on West Charleston Boulevard.

The waiting list reached a record 71 Sept. 1, she said, adding that for area emergency rooms that translated to about one-quarter of the emergency room beds being occupied by people who should have been at her hospital.

The hospital treats patients who either voluntarily commit themselves or who are involuntarily committed because authorities or doctors believe they pose a danger to themselves or others. People involuntarily committed are first brought to an emergency room to make sure a medical condition, such as low blood sugar, is not the cause of their unusual behavior.

Triggs also said that a hospital away from the city would be bad for patients because patients' relatives would have a hard time coming to visit them if the hospital was far away.

Brna and others also said that according to a state report, the state really needs 511 inpatient psychiatric beds.

But Triggs has said the proposed hospital will be big enough to address the shortage of inpatient beds now.

Triggs said the estimate of 511 beds is what Nevada would need to match the national average of 33 beds for the mentally ill per 100,000 population. Nevada now has 4.5 beds per 100,000 population, but many of the beds in other states lie empty as the trend in treating the mentally ill moves away from institutions, she said.

Most of the treatment of the mentally ill now is done in outpatient settings, Triggs said. The average length of stay in the current hospital is 17 days, she said.