Solution sought for wait

Sitting with psychiatric patients ties up deputies

Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007

By Marcie Young
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

Law enforcement and mental health officials in Burke County are working together to reduce the amount of time officers spend waiting with psychiatric patients in need of a bed at Broughton Hospital or another facility.

But there's no easy solution.

Mental health workers are often forced to turn patients away when hospitals are overcrowded, and local law enforcement is responsible for waiting with involuntary patients - those required by a magistrate to go through a psychiatric evaluation - until space opens up.

"We have to sit with them, whether it's three days, four days or five days," McDevitt said. "Basically, we're stuck."

The first weekend in July, Burke County deputies sat with two mental health patients for nearly 100 hours in a hospital emergency room, waiting for space to open at Broughton, John Umstead Hospital in Butner, Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh or at Frye Regional Medical Center's South Campus in Hickory.

The following weekend, McDevitt said, five deputies were pulled off patrol while they picked up involuntarily committed mental health patients and waited for open beds.

"It's a real manpower issue," he said. "We haven't had a disaster happen because of it, but if we have two or three deputies tied up on commitments, we'll have a lot of calls waiting."

For every hour deputies wait with patients, often sitting inside an exam room at Grace Hospital or Valdese Hospital, the less time officers have to respond to other calls in the county, McDevitt said.

Often, when one psychiatric hospital is overcrowded, all state facilities are also at capacity, extending the wait for an open bed, said Laura White of the N.C. Division of Mental Health.

In January, the state implemented a policy that caps the number of patients psychiatric hospitals can accept at any given time, White said. Now, she said, hospitals cannot exceed a capacity of 110 percent.

Before then, state hospitals were regularly taking in 20 to 50 percent more patients over capacity, she said, with Broughton routinely housing about 20 percent more.

Broughton's adult capacity caps at 140 beds, said Jon Berry, chief of support services at the hospital.

That's part of the reason why officers are sitting longer and more often with patients, said John Hardy, director of Mental Health Services Catawba, which also serves Burke.

Now, mental health officials and Burke County commissioners are trying to find a way to keep deputies on the streets and find other ways - beyond the Sheriff's Office budget - to pay for the time they spend with waiting patients.

The next meeting, which will include representatives from Grace and Valdese hospitals, mental health providers, commissioners and law enforcement, is scheduled for Aug. 30, Hardy said.

Possible solutions could include using money appropriated by the state, creating a general fund and using off-duty officers, rather than those working a Sheriff's Office shift, he said.

The real resolution, however, depends on staffing at hospitals and how many patients need to be committed, Hardy said.

"The squeaky issue at the moment is that we have law enforcement tied up," he said. "Well, there's also the issue that we don't have people available in the right places to help out patients."
Often, Hardy said, beds are open at Grace Hospital's psychiatric unit, but the facility doesn't have enough doctors to handle extra patients. But the priority, he said, is to keep patients and staff safe and not overextend each hospital's capability.

"If you have a supply and demand problem, you have to alter that one side or the other," he said. "Everyone is scrambling."

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