|
|
Community Article Categories: |
|
|
| Health - Triage Unit Resumes Operations |
|
| 05/27/2010 |
by: Lake Charles Memorial Hospital |
A triage unit at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital designed to assist those with a mental illness has resumed operations after a seven-month hiatus. The unit is part of a cohesive effort between Memorial Hospital, Office of Mental Health, Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, Resource Management Services, local law enforcement agencies, area hospital administrators, and other health care professionals and community leaders.
The triage unit was implemented in 2007 as part of a collaborative training and treatment initiative to help better serve the needs of the mentally ill in the community. As part of this initiative, local law enforcement officers receive intervention training in how to deal with those in a mental health crisis. The triage unit provides a place for the Crisis Intervention Team to bring those individuals so they can receive the appropriate care and attention. Before this collaborative effort was initiated, many of these individuals were placed in custody, according to Mickey Shannon, chairperson of the mental health task force of Southwest Louisiana and president of Resource Management Services.
“The task force continues to look at ways to provide a complete continuum of care. The triage is a huge piece of that – the centerpiece, practically,” Shannon said. “It is nothing short of a humanitarian act on the part of Memorial Hospital. The fact that they developed this specialty unit, and are willing to continue its operation, shows a stand of solidarity with some of the most marginalized people of our community.”
The triage unit was originally funded through a three year ($1.8 million per year) grant from a Hurricane Rita Social Services Block Grant. When the grant ended in June 2009, community leaders once again regrouped to determine how to continue triage services. Those discussions involved hospital administrators, local psychiatrists and physicians, Sen. Willie Mount, Mayor Randy Roach, local law enforcement agencies, the Office of Mental Health, Samaritan Counseling Center, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, representatives with the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury and Judge Robert Wyatt, who has been instrumental in plans to develop a mental health court to complete the continuum. According to Shannon, the collaborative effort to reinstate triage services and Memorial Hospital’s willingness to shoulder the associated costs and obligations is “groundbreaking.”
The triage center is temporarily funded by one-time grants from the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury and the Office of Mental Health. A Mental Health Emergency Room Extension (MHERE) license from the Department of Health and Hospitals, a license that Sen. Mount was instrumental in obtaining, is expected to provide future funding.
“This triage center is of obvious benefit to the community and was well-deserving of a focused joint effort to ensure it would be able to continue operations,” Sen. Mount, D-Lake Charles, said. “The MHERE license plays an integral role in allowing Memorial hospital to provide specialized services for citizens who are too often underrepresented.”
According to Crisis System Manager Dick Tanous of Resource Management Services, the triage unit provided more than 2,200 mental health assessments in 2008. Of those, 48 percent were brought in my law enforcement.
“In years past, those 48 percent would have likely been brought into the criminal justice system, where their needs may not have been met properly,” said Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Darek Ardoin with the Crisis Intervention Team. Ardoin was instrumental in spearheading the movement toward CIT training for law enforcement. “The Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Lake Charles Police Department now have adequate training to recognize individuals in mental health crisis so we can respond appropriately. In many cases what these individuals need is intervention and treatment, rather than arrest and incarceration. But proper training of law enforcement is only one step. Once we recognize what a person needs, we must be able to fulfill that need somehow. That is the role that the triage unit plays and why it is so important that its service are being reinstated.”
Todd Delahoussaye, Sr. Vice President of Lake Charles Memorial Hospital said the hospital is dedicated to the continuation of mental health services for our community.
“The ability to reopen this triage unit was the result of dedicated collaboration by many different people in our community who saw the detriment its long-term closure would have to Southwest Louisiana. Lake Charles Memorial Hospital is proud and pleased to be the impetus to move this initiative forward,” said Misty Kelly, MBA, MA, LAC, CCDP-D, Director of Psychiatric Service at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital said. “We are anxious to work with other hospitals to expand access to services available for those in our community who suffer from mental health issues.”
Another element of the continuum of care will be the development of a mental health court. “The mental health court is part of the whole process to provide necessary mental health care to the community,” Shannon said. “We’re forging ahead with that vision just as we forged ahead with the other elements that have already experienced success and support. It’s a real credit to our community that these much-needed mental health services are being successfully implemented. What we have accomplished here is something we can all be proud of and it is serving as a model for similar programs cross the country.”
For more information on the triage unit, contact Lake Charles Memorial’s Triage Center at 337.494.2185
|
|
