Local mental system still recovering from storms’ wrath

The Tri-parish area continues to struggle with helping adults and children seeking mental healthcare. The current system can’t handle the outpouring of need that surfaced after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Local legislators met with Dr. Frederick Cerise, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, at Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center Monday to discuss opportunities to create available beds and to hear what the state is planning to do to fix Louisiana’s dismal healthcare system.

“We are in a mental health crisis,” Sen. Reggie Dupre explained to Cerise and other legislators. Dupre said Chabert, which resides in District 3, currently maintains 10 open beds for behavioral disorder or psychiatric in-patients.

With the New Orleans charity hospital permanently closed, Chabert is seeing an overwhelming amount of patients coming from all over south Louisiana for help.

Once beds designated for mental health patients are filled, the overflow is sent to the emergency room and hospital director Larry Walker said the lack of room has affected the number of ER beds available for trauma patients.

The answer, according to Cerise, is a decentralized system that allows in-patient and outpatient services to coordinate their systems to allow providers with free access so patients can easily use one service or another. Calls for public and private caregivers to work in unison would greatly relieve the burden on state hospitals, which provide the majority of in-patient mental health care in the state, officials agreed.

“We are trying to get things better aligned… now with a human services district coming online it makes great sense to align those in and out patient service. We haven’t done a good job because the system is so fragmented,” said Cerise.

Dupre said the Bayou Region is developing a health services department, and will remain a nine-member advisory board until additional federal funding is approved.

“We’ve created (a board) and created language, which will allow it to work as an advisory board so on July 1, when funding passes, we don’t go crazy,” said Dupre.

Members for the board are currently being appointed.

Before Katrina, the state tried to implement a regional Human Health Service Department, but when funding was finally approved, the department was not up and running and the program fell through.

Walker said there is a plan to relieve the mental health crisis locally by retrofitting the fifth floor at Chabert for its own mental health unit. Refurbishing, including technology upgrades, will cost the state $600,000 and is slated to be complete in July.

Chabert wants to add 10 beds to the unit once renovations are complete, which will cost $1.1 million-per-year. The money for the new beds was not approved by the DHH for the first part of 2007 because Chabert had not accounted for them in financial reports to the state, but should get a share to add beds to the new unit after a second report is reviewed.

The new beds should be acquired at the same time renovations are complete.

Cerise said Chabert is in a unique position because it is self-sufficient and can develop working relationships with local outpatient services without government oversight, which should help relieve the need for mental health care until the new unit is opened.