Groundbreaking held for psychiatric hospital in LV

Beth Slovic

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2005 | 8:40 a.m.

Gov. Kenny Guinn was present Tuesday for the groundbreaking of the $32 million psychiatric hospital officials hope will relieve the severe overcrowding of Southern Nevada's emergency rooms.

The number of beds the facility will have when it is scheduled to open in May 2006 is still in the hands of the Legislature.

The hospital will be built at the corner of Oakey and Jones boulevards near the current campus of Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services.

If the Legislature approves the $100 million increase for mental health spending proposed in Guinn's state budget, the facility will open with a fourth cluster of beds, bringing the total number of beds in the hospital up from an initial 150 to 190, Carlos Brandenburg, the administrator of the state Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services, said.

If the money is cut, the addition of these 40 beds will be delayed until at least December 2006, Brandenburg said.

Meanwhile, Southern Nevada has far too few beds to appropriately treat mentally ill patients, Brandenburg added. So mentally ill patients who have been medically cleared by physicians to enter a psychiatric hospital often end up waiting in emergency rooms for days on end for a bed to open up, he said.

It's a problem that came to a boil in July when a third of all emergency-room hospital beds in the area were occupied by mentally ill patients who were waiting for beds in psychiatric facilities. Clark County Manager Thom Reilly had to declare a mental health emergency.

Today the inpatient facility at Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services continues to operate at full capacity, and psychiatric patients still have to wait for days for an appropriate placement.

According to the state's Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services, every day an average of 62 people wait for 93 hours before they are checked into a psychiatric hospital. Just two years ago, a daily average of 28 people waited for 45 hours for the same services.

At the groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday, Guinn said the facility was sorely needed. He said the facility's construction and operating costs, paid for by the state, would not cut into the budgets of other programs.

"We're not shortchanging other programs to do this," Guinn said.

Administrators for the new facility are already recruiting nurses and other employees.