Editorial: A long wait for the doctor

Friday, Dec. 8, 2006 | 7:11 a.m.

While state officials have tried to ease the mental health crisis with additional hospital beds, their efforts have been hamstrung by trouble recruiting doctors and, in part, by the state Board of Medical Examiners, which licenses doctors.

As Cy Ryan reported in Tuesday's Las Vegas Sun, the state opened a 150-bed mental health hospital this year in Las Vegas and wants to expand it with 40 more beds, but it is having trouble recruiting the two psychiatrists needed to do so. And the Board of Medical Examiners hasn't helped.

The state can't easily recruit physicians from out of state because the board requires doctors to go through a licensing process that can last six to nine months. The board's reaction to the state's problem of getting psychiatrists licensed is to note that there is an expedited program to temporarily license doctors who will be working in a state facility. That takes a not-so-swift three to four months.

Carlos Brandenburg, administrator of the state Mental Health and Developmental Services Division, said, "We have a crisis."

That's especially true as the state prepares to open a community health center in downtown Las Vegas next year that will serve up to 1,500 patients, many of whom are expected to need mental health care.

This isn't just a problem for state officials. It's a problem for the whole medical community: The state needs more doctors.

It's important that the hospital be expanded quickly because mental health patients have, for several years now, created a backlog in hospital emergency rooms in the Las Vegas Valley, where they sit, often for days, waiting for a spot at a mental hospital.

The board rightly should be screening doctors carefully and taking the time needed to do that, but it needs to do more to help. The board should be working with state officials and medical providers to find ways to temporarily license physicians who already have been approved in other states while it checks backgrounds. Otherwise, we'll only continue to compound the problem we already have.