Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

State can’t help fund triage center in Las Vegas

CARSON CITY -- An effort has failed, at least temporarily, to gain more state money to help operate a triage center in Las Vegas to take care of the chronically inebriated, drug addicts and mentally ill people who are filling up hospital emergency rooms and jails.

The Legislative Interim Finance Committee Tuesday declined to allocate $200,000 to WestCare, which operates a program financially supported by local governments and hospitals to alleviate the problem.

The committee instead named a subcommittee to look at the issue and report back in November on whether additional state funds should be allocated.

The program, which started earlier this year, accepts those who are drunk, on drugs or mentally ill and would otherwise go to an emergency room. The patients are stabilized and given advice on continuing their treatment, said Richard Steinberg, president and chief executive officer of WestCare Foundation, which operates the program.

More than 3,300 people have been diverted from emergency rooms or local jails to the triage center so far this year, he said.

The program was started with a combination of local funding and $600,000 in state grants. WestCare had sought another $1.6 million a year allocation in the last legislative session, but the measure died.

Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, the chairman of the Interim Finance Committee, said it would be a bad precedent to allow any group that loses a fight in the Legislature to return between sessions to seek money.

He called it "The Return of Frankenstein" and added, "This is a monster once we approve it."

But Sen. Sandra Tiffany, R-Henderson, said the 50-bed triage center is needed to divert people away from emergency rooms to make room for those with medical problems.

On average 30 mentally ill people took up beds in local emergency rooms when they could be handled by a triage center, former Clark County Sheriff Jerry Keller told a legislative subcommittee on mental health issues last year. Often they waited two to three days before they could be transferred into a state mental health center.

Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, defended the triage center Tuesday, calling it a "progressive" program and saying WestCare is "not a money waster." The program cuts the cost of hospital care, he said.

Steinberg said it costs $3.8 million a year to operate the triage center. The state contributes $470,000 through the state Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Abuse and $166,000 from state Health Care Fund, funded by the tobacco settlement.

The nonprofit originally hoped to receive another $600,000 a year from the finance committee, but the state would only consider a $200,000 request.

The state Human Resources Division, with the support of the Guinn administration, proposed taking $200,000 in extra federal money it received and send it to WestCare.

But Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said the state may have to repay $500,000 to the federal government after failing to provide matching funds for another budget item. Leslie was concerned there would not be enough money to pay that amount if money went to WestCare.

She said Senate Bill 151, which allocated the state's share, died in the Senate. She said there was never any testimony in the Assembly about the program. She said WestCare's proposal was "too loose, not concrete."

Leslie wanted to know how this program fit into the expanded mental health programs authorized for Southern Nevada by the 2003 Legislature.

The $200,000 proposal got support from Lt. Stan Olsen of the Metro Police Department, Dan Musgrove of Clark County and Kami Dempsey of the city of Las Vegas.

Olsen said Metro has 50 officers trained to deal with people who have mental health problems. These are dangerous people, he said, and some of them end up in jail instead of a triage center, where they can be stabilized.

He cited two cases where a woman was thinking about suicide and another where a man was throwing rocks at cars and buildings. Both were taken to WestCare and stabilized.

Musgrove said Clark County and University Medical Center have contributed $770,000 so far this year and he said if the state doesn't contribute the program will be re-evaluated.

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