Psychiatric patients still flooding LV valley’s ERs

Friday, July 15, 2005 | 11:05 a.m.

There were 112 psychiatric patients in the Las Vegas Valley's emergency rooms Wednesday at midnight, more than when Clark County Manager Thom Reilly declared a mental health emergency last year.

Rory Chetelat, Clark County Health District's emergency medical services coordinator, said the valley's 11 hospitals have carried from 90 to 105 mentally ill patients since Monday.

He said the heat may be playing a role in the surge.

Reilly said the situation is worrisome.

"A year later and we're worse off than we were," he said. "It's been frustrating to see these numbers ... (and) we can't call another emergency on top of the first one."

Reilly said every time he has considered lifting the state of emergency in the last year, the crisis has returned. When he declared the emergency a year ago, there were 105 mentally ill patients in the valley's hospitals, which have a total of about 350 emergency room beds.

Though the number had gone back down to 85 by Thursday afternoon, that still meant about one in four emergency beds in the valley were filled by a psychiatric patient waiting for treatment in a state-run mental health hospital or some other hospital, or to be sent home, perhaps to get back into the system again soon.

The issue, Reilly said, affects both psychiatric patients and the rest of the valley.

"It's not appropriate treatment for the mentally ill, and it affects everybody in this community," he said.

The news came even as the recently concluded Legislature approved funding for a 50-bed crisis center at a location not yet chosen and, by next July, a 190-bed psychiatric hospital on the state's mental health campus at Charleston and Jones boulevards.

The problem facing the valley's hospitals has come about because the number of psychiatric patients has risen faster than the state's ability to care for them.

By law, such patients must be given a physical check-up in emergency rooms before they can obtain psychiatric care, but the mentally ill are often kept in emergency rooms for days while waiting for space at the state's campus or in private hospitals, or are discharged, said Jim Osti, a grant writer with the Clark County Health District and a member of the Southern Nevada Mental Health Coalition.

Jonna Triggs, director of Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services, the state agency that runs the mental health campus, said the latest numbers led her to authorize overtime payment starting Tuesday for what is known as the mobile crisis team.

The team's six members spend their days in hospitals trying to find ways to get patients out of emergency rooms and into group homes, drug treatment centers or other programs.

Triggs said the next step in meeting the emergency will come Aug. 4 when a decision should be made about who will run the new 50-bed center.

After that, it would take until the fall for the center to be on line.

Reilly said he is talking with all involved to see if there is a way to speed the process along.

Osti said the danger in dealing with numbers such as those seen this week is that the valley could have difficulty handling an emergency.

In fact, from Monday to Wednesday this week, he said, hospitals participating in an emergency preparedness exercise involving state and local agencies had to turn away patients for lack of room.

"If we were to have a real emergency, an accident or something, the system would break down."