Group gets OK to devise funding plan for WestCare

Friday, July 23, 2004 | 11:13 a.m.

Gov. Kenny Guinn freed up money Thursday to help make more beds available for the mentally ill and a regional planning coalition gave the go-ahead for developing a new plan to fund a treatment center, both moves in response to a recently-declared health care crisis.

Guinn authorized spending $203,307 in emergency funds to rehabilitate a building on the state's mental health campus in Las Vegas to take the mentally ill that are crowding area hospital emergency rooms, the cause of the crisis declared by Clark County.

Carlos Brandenburg, director of the state Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services said the building will be ready to use Aug. 1.

"It's going to be real fast," Brandenburg said.

However, the Guinn administration is still trying to figure out how to get up to several millions of dollars to operate and staff the 28-bed facility until the Legislature convenes in February.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas Thursday, the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition -- a group of representatives from local governments -- gave the go-ahead for a technical group from those same governments to come up with a new plan for funding a center that helps the mentally ill and drug and alcohol addicts.

Richard Steinberg, president of the WestCare Community Triage Center, saw the move as "positive," adding, "at least they're all talking about how they can work it out."

The center has been threatened with closing because a funding formula dividing the $3.8 million cost in equal parts between the state, local municipalities and local hospitals has not worked. In particular, the state has not paid its share, causing other participants in the formula to question their own roles.

The state gave WestCare $200,000 in recent weeks.

Dan Musgrove, who is director of intergovernmental relations for the county, spoke to the coalition about the effort to come up with a new funding formula. Musgrove said that it may be necessary to decrease the share local municipalities pay and increase the share for hospitals.

This would be based in part on the objection by Henderson to pay its share of the third, arguing that the problem the center is trying to address is based more in the county and Las Vegas. As well, there are two hospitals that have opened in recent months, Musgrove said, which could make it easier for hospitals to increase the share they pay to the center.

Coalition chairwoman and Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams said local governments "really have to lobby the state." Chip Maxfield, chairman of the county commission, sent a letter Thursday to Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas and chairman of the Assembly's Ways and Means committee, asking the Legislature's interim finance committee "to consider a manner in which WestCare's Community Triage Center can ... continue to help alleviate the burden on hospitals, EMS transport and the police."

The interim finance committee has an emergency fund with an estimated $3.3 million, according to staff at the Legislature.

Musgrove said he will be meeting with a group of hospital chief executive officers Aug. 4 to discuss possibilities for funding the center. He said he hopes to have a final proposal worked out for local municipalities to vote on by mid-August, since WestCare's current funding, which was awarded by the governor on an emergency basis in recent weeks, runs out by the end of the month.

"I don't care about how they work it out," Steinberg said in the hallway outside Thursday's meeting.

"I just want to keep the doors open."

Brandenburg said he and the governor knew this problem was coming but they didn't think it would explode as soon as it did.

"It happened a lot sooner than we thought," he said.