New psychiatric beds credited with relieving valley emergency rooms

The number of mentally ill patients waiting in Las Vegas Valley emergency rooms for psychiatric facility placements significantly decreased in December, with only 29 people in that situation as of Tuesday.

That is a surprising new low for a population that had been climbing, pushing several emergency rooms to capacity and forcing them to close to new patients at times in 2014. A year ago Tuesday, 149 mentally ill patients were in emergency rooms waiting to be transferred elsewhere, said Mary Woods, spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.

“This is the first time I can remember in a long, long time that we’ve been below 30,” Mike Willden, chief of staff for Gov. Brian Sandoval, said Tuesday.

The number of mentally ill patients in emergency rooms at the beginning of December was still above 100, but the population gradually decreased throughout the month. On Dec. 16, that population fell to 76, Woods said.

Willden said the decrease is related to the 20 psychiatric beds that became available at Valley Hospital Medical Center on Dec. 10. The creation of those beds was rooted in one of several recommendations from the governor’s Behavioral Health and Wellness Council, which was tasked with improving the state’s struggling mental health system.

In late August, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved an increase to Nevada’s daily psychiatric reimbursement rate, raising it from $460 to $944.

The increase was an incentive for Valley Hospital to open a psychiatric unit.

State officials hope the increase will prompt other acute hospitals to do the same.

State officials believed investing Medicaid dollars is the solution because more psychiatric beds can become available at private hospitals when beds can’t be added at state-run facilities.

“I think this is a direct result, and this is really the outcome that we expected,” Willden said. “It appears to be working in the first month.”

The beds at Valley Hospital have been consistently full, according to Gretchen Papez, spokeswoman for Valley Health System, which owns the hospital.

When the unit is operating at capacity it is expected to have 48 beds.

Hospital officials are recruiting additional staff, and their goal is to have 32 beds open by late January, Papez said.

Willden predicts the number of mentally ill patients waiting in emergency rooms will continue to remain low and may continue to decrease after Valley opens additional beds.

“I think you’ll see Rawson-Neal (Psychiatric Hospital) … run under capacity,” he said.

The state-run hospital operates 211 beds, all of which have been full most days of the past several years.

However, he said, there still could be a few spikes in the number of patients during certain weekends or when certain events take place, but for the most part the state is “turning the corner on this issue.”

Fourteen new triage beds also became available in November for the mentally ill at the Las Vegas WestCare triage center.

The increase in beds was also another recommendation from the Behavioral Health and Wellness Council.

The state government, local hospitals and local jurisdictions each pay one-third of the cost for the triage center.

The work to improve mental health services in Nevada has been encouraging, Willden said.

The Behavioral Health and Wellness Council’s deadline to submit its second report with recommendations to Sandoval was Wednesday. But Willden said he didn’t expect to receive the report until later this month.

Contact Yesenia Amaro at yamaro@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0440. Find her on Twitter: @YeseniaAmaro.