Bed shortage forces L.A. County mental health staff to rely on police
Under current law, patients must be admitted if they are brought in by police -- but not if they are brought in by a mental health worker. Commissioners seek a quick solution to the problem.
Alarmed by reports that Los Angeles County mental health staff -- hobbled by a countywide shortage of beds for the mentally ill -- are increasingly forwarding emergency calls to police, commissioners overseeing the department on Thursday asked that a plan to end the practice be presented by early next month.
Department of Mental Health workers have turned to law enforcement officials because hospitals are required by law to take emergency mental health patients transported by police. If a county mental health worker brings a person in for treatment, facilities are not compelled to accept them.
According to department records, mental health staff responded to 10,003 calls this year, down 20% from 12,722 calls answered last year.
"Not only do we use police who might be doing other things, but we're also taking more people than need to go" to hospitals, Dr. Roderick Shaner, the department's medical director, said during a meeting of county mental health commissioners. Shaner said his office is looking for a better option than relying on police to get patients admitted to hospitals.
The increased police response to mental health emergencies was first reported this month in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and mental health commissioners cited the article in calling for immediate fixes, despite the shortage of hospital beds.
"That should be no excuse for not taking someone with a mental health issue," said commissioner Barry Perrou, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff's sergeant. The department "says we're running out of bed space -- well, we're running out of back seats. We want these patients to be somewhere they can be managed, not the back of a police car."
The department began shifting emergency calls to police in March 2006, Shaner said, as hospital bed space tightened countywide. As of last month, there were 2,562 beds available for mental health patients in Los Angeles County, he said, and only about 200 of them were at county hospitals, which are required to admit poor and uninsured patients.
County staff monitor bed space hourly, and Shaner said "they're never empty. There is a huge, pent-up demand." The average patient stays about two weeks.
Although some departments have created hybrid teams of mental health staff and police, there are only a dozen in Los Angeles and a handful in Long Beach and Pasadena. Advocates for the mentally ill and the homeless say that there are not enough hybrid teams to go around and that police who respond alone can aggravate emergencies.
