Phil Kadner: 4-day waits in ER for the mentally ill

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Updated: December 3, 2011 8:22AM

Over the past weekend, six mentally ill people spent two to four days in the emergency room of South Suburban Hospital.

They were not being treated for their mental illness. They were waiting in ER bays to be transferred to a hospital with available psychiatric beds.

“We had sitters, big guys, sit with them around the clock because we couldn’t have them roaming off,” said Michael Englehart, president of South Suburban Hospital in Hazel Crest.

“We also have to have nurses assigned to them. We have 20 ER bays. Imagine what would have happened if someone had come in having a stroke or a heart attack, and we wouldn’t have been able to treat them?”

Englehart was one of several health experts who testified Tuesday before a legislative commission about the state’s plan to close the Tinley Park Mental Health Center.

That facility once treated more than 100 chronically mentally ill patients a day but was reduced to caring for 60 and now has only 35 patients.

The situation at South Suburban Hospital’s ER, from what I heard, isn’t unique.

Joseph Troiani, director of behavior programs for the Will County Health Department, said mentally ill patients brought to Silver Cross and Saint Joseph hospitals’ emergency rooms now wait an average of 47 hours for a psychiatric bed to become available.

“If Tinley Park closes,” Troiani testified, “the average wait could be three to five days.”

And state Sen. Maggie Crotty (D-Oak Forest), while questioning state officials who advocate closing the mental health center, said she has heard of emergency room stays of two days and five days for the mentally ill in the Southland.

Tinley Park Mental Health Center has already had its funding cut in half by the Legislature.

Officials from the governor’s office of management and budget and the state mental health and human services departments testified that they interpreted the cut as a directive from legislators to close the center.

State Rep. Kevin McCarthy (D-Orland Park), a member of the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, which held Tuesday’s hearing, indicated that he strongly disagreed with that assumption.

McCarthy wanted to know why human services officials didn’t alert legislators early on to the fact that they had cut the Tinley Park center’s budget from about $21 million to about $10.5 million.

While it may sound shocking that lawmakers don’t know details of every bill they vote on, Crotty had a similar reaction to McCarthy’s when I told her in September that the center’s budget had been slashed.

Crotty, who has been a mental health care activist, was unaware that the Legislature had passed a bill providing only six months worth of funding for Tinley Park.

As for the governor’s office, his folks were nearly giddy in giving me the news that Gov. Pat Quinn hadn’t cut the Tinley Park center’s budget, the Legislature had. The governor asked for full funding, I was told.

But then the governor’s office announced plans to close three mental health centers in Illinois.

On Tuesday, his representatives insisted that Quinn was only dealing with the budget he was handed by lawmakers.

At Tuesday’s public hearing, the consequences of the state’s decision were driven home by health and law enforcement officials, elected leaders, advocates for the mentally ill and many others.

There were predictions of “catastrophic” situations in Southland emergency rooms. The mentally ill, uninsured and homeless, would become a law enforcement problem.

Christopher Skene, of the Mental Health Summit, testified that the people taken to Tinley Park are not mildly ill. They are sometimes delusional. Psychotic. Potentially dangerous.

And the state has no plan in place to deal with these folks when Tinley Park closes ... next month.

That’s right. State officials announced at Tuesday’s hearing that they’re sending out 30-day notices of layoffs to Tinley Park center employees today and intend to shut it down by Dec. 3.

So the legislative commission’s recommendation may not matter. Quinn will apparently ignore all the testimony presented. The opinions of experts and local leaders will not be heard by him.

Five area hospitals have agreed to treat patients from the Tinley Park center, state officials said Tuesday.

When Crotty asked them to name the hospitals, they could not. They’ve just been in talks, not real negotiations, the governor’s people said.

This is crazy. Insane. Plain stupid.

And that’s your government at work.