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From a story in the March 11, 2006
edition of the Lincoln Journal Star:
The
Lincoln Crisis Center is full most of the time, often with
people waiting for space at the Lincoln Regional Center. The
mental health unit at Bryan-LGH Medical Center West is seeing
beds fill up with people who should be at the crisis center.
And the folks with no place to go are sitting in emergency
rooms hour after hour.
Local hospital and behavioral health administrators
tie this new crisis directly to the rapid loss of beds at
the Norfolk Regional Center that is part of the mental health
reform plan to close regional centers and create more services
in local communities. State administrators say they will work
with hospitals and others to solve the problem, but they don’t
believe the cause is the downsizing at the Norfolk center.
Mental health reform is working, said C.
J. Johnson, administrator for Region V Systems, which oversees
behavioral health services in Southeast Nebraska. The number
of people using community services is up. The number of people
committed to a locked program under the mental health commitment
process is down. And this is good news, he said.
With fewer beds available at Norfolk, other
areas of the state began to send patients to the Lincoln Regional
Center, taking beds that would normally be used for Lincoln-area
patients who have been committed to a secure program, Johnson
said.
And it’s a statewide problem, according
to Shannon Engler, a BryanLGH Medical Center administrator
who is a member of the oversight commission.
Hospitals in Lincoln, Omaha and Hastings
are being flooded with patients, filling up the mental health
units and backing up emergency rooms, he said. People are
waiting in emergency rooms for hours, sometimes up to three
days, while staff look for a bed. “It is jeopardizing
that emergency system,” he said.
State leaders say they will work on the
issue, which they believe may have broader roots than shutting
down beds at the Norfolk Regional Center.
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