State OKs funds for mental health treatment facility

Stephen Curran and Cy Ryan

Thursday, Aug. 25, 2005 | 11:13 a.m.

The state Board of Examiners on Wednesday approved a $7 million contract designed to ease the strain on Clark County emergency rooms whose beds were routinely filled by mental health patients with nowhere else to go.

The board unanimously approved the contract with WestCare for a temporary treatment facility near Martin Luther King Boulevard and Alta Drive during an emergency meeting called to address the problem, said Carlos Brandenburg, administrative director of the state Division of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities.

The vote could bring an end to what county Manager Thom Reilly declared a mental health emergency 14 months ago, when hospitals reported more than 100 psychiatric patients crowding emergency rooms unprepared to help them.

The numbers continued to swell, reaching 112 psychiatric patients in area emergency rooms within days of the one-year anniversary of Reilly's announcement. The numbers have since dropped but continue to fluctuate between the 70 and high 80s, according to statistics provided by the county.

"I was thinking a couple of months," Reilly said of when he expected the emergency to end. "I never envisioned it would take as long as it did."

Reilly said he expects the shortened timetable for opening the WestCare facility to end the crisis "in the next several weeks."

Brandenburg was slightly less optimistic, saying it was unclear when county leaders could deem the crisis officially over.

"I don't think it's going to solve it, but I think it'll go a long way toward alleviating it," he said.

The county manager credited Gov. Kenny Guinn -- who chairs the Examiners Board and participated in the meeting by phone -- with increasing funding in the state budget 58 percent for mental health staff.

The contract to operate the 50-bed facility begins Sept. 1 and will expire on Aug. 31, 2006, when it will be replaced by a permanent hospital now under construction and expected to open in April 2006, Brandenburg said.

Mental health specialists estimate that it takes more than 100 hours for a psychiatric patient to move from an emergency room to an already overcrowded state hospital.

Brandenburg said WestCare has hired 41 of the 70 new employees it will need to handle the patients coming into its new facility, which must still get approval from the state Bureau of Licensing and Certification.

Under the new plan, patients cleared medically from an emergency room would be transferred to WestCare, where mental health specialists would determine whether to release them into the community with a treatment plan or recommend them for a space in a state hospital, he said.

The streamlined system will help patients who may not be physically ailing receive the mental treatment they need, giving them access to specialists not found in most emergency rooms, Reilly said.

"(At an emergency room) they're basically not being treated for their mental health," he said. "It's a holding facility and it's not appropriate."