CARSON CITY -- The state Legislature might aid Clark County's overwhelmed emergency rooms by kicking in money for a triage center to evaluate mental health patients.
The Assembly's Health and Human Services Committee approved a bill Monday that would give an emergency $600,000 allotment toward mental health triage centers in Clark and Washoe counties.
Assembly Bill 40 now heads to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, which approves all new money expenditures. But it would only allot enough money to last through the end of June; legislators said they will have to take up the issue of long-term funding for the centers when debating the upcoming biennium budget.
The state's 131 beds in the Las Vegas area for mental health patients are continually full.
Officials from a wide variety of agencies -- law enforcement, health care, government and mental health organizations -- said Clark County's triage center, which opened in January 2003, has prevented thousands of mental health patients from going directly to the emergency room or jail.
The triage center frees up emergency room beds and "is also a far more humane way than to put them in jail for their protection or the protection of others," said Kathryn Landreth, chairwoman of the Southern Nevada Mental Health Coalition and counsel for Metro Police.
For example, on Friday, there were 76 mental health patients in Las Vegas area emergency rooms waiting to be transferred to another facility, Dan Musgrove, county director of intergovernmental relations, said.
The mental patients can take up to 120 hours in emergency room beds before health officials determine where to send them, said Clark County Manager Thom Reilly, who declared a state of emergency last summer because of a lack of emergency room beds.
Reilly said the situation now "isn't much different than it was back when we declared a state of emergency."
Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said she sees broad support for emergency mental health funding. Leslie, the chairwoman of the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee, said she will now need to find more than $1 million a year to fund the triage centers on an ongoing basis.
Hospitals and local governments that have footed the bill for a triage center in Clark County are tired of the state not kicking in money, Leslie said.
Clark County and local hospitals expected that the state would kick in one-third of the costs of the triage center, but the Legislature was reluctant to spend money in the 2003 legislative session, said Musgrove.
"It's such a tenuous problem right now," Musgrove said. "Everybody's looking at everyone else and saying, are you going to be at the table? I think it all depends on what the Legislature does."
Gov. Kenny Guinn didn't put money in his budget for the triage centers, Leslie said. She said she is making it a priority to look for ways to shuffle money.
"That's the challenge," she said. "I don't see how we can afford not to do it."
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