Lack of MASH clinic upsets hospital official

An eleventh-hour decision postponing plans to build a medical clinic inside the MASH Village homeless shelter has sent one local hospital into a tailspin.

Randall Hempling, administrator of Lake Mead Hospital in North Las Vegas, is fearful that homeless women and children from the shelter, located at 1559 N. Main St., will have no choice but to go to the hospital's emergency room. The hospital, he said, is the closest medical facility in the area.

"They'll show up in the emergency room with nonemergency needs," Hempling said Tuesday. "Most of the hospitals have been going on divert (from November through May), and 50 percent of these people are not emergencies."

In divert situations, dispatchers direct paramedics to take patients to hospitals whose emergency rooms aren't full.

MASH Village, a shelter for homeless families and women with children, is scheduled to break ground in June on a four-story, 73,000-square-foot building. It will house 60 families and provide living space, kitchen facilities and child care.

Harvey Mandel, vice president of MASH, said the medical center may still be built, if a donor comes forward and pledges $500,000.

"It doesn't cost $500,000 to put a clinic in," Hempling said. "That's absurd. It may cost $100,000 to do it right, and they should have this money in the budget."

Hempling said Lake Mead Hospital usually covers in excess of $400,000 a month in bad debt and charity cases involving patients who can't pay. He expects that figure to climb, unless the MASH shelter builds a clinic.

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