Quinn’s plan still lacking

• Reprints

Updated: December 14, 2011 8:18AM

We know the Tinley Park Mental Health Center’s future is bleak. But it’s still unclear how long it will remain open and, more importantly, who will provide care for its patients once it closes.

A legislative panel last week rejected part of Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to close five mental health centers and two prisons by Dec. 1, prompting the governor and his staff to scramble for a new approach. It may provide a temporary reprieve for the Southland center, but unfortunately not for long.

The Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability overwhelmingly opposed the governor’s plan to close the Tinley Park center and two others downstate — after having voted last month to not close four other facilities. The commission correctly ripped the plan as hastily conceived with few, if any, alternatives for treating the mentally ill.

After the commission’s stinging rebuke, Quinn’s staff announced a new plan to close four of the mental health centers and two psychiatric hospitals over the next 21/2 years and save the two prisons — all contingent on the Legislature authorizing money to keep them open through June 30.

While the new plan would keep three centers open as long as through 2013, the Tinley Park center would close no later than June 30, providing that legislators find the needed funds.

We’ve supported closing the Tinley Park center but only if there’s a clear, workable plan to care for the roughly 1,900 patients it treats annually. We’re still waiting to see such a plan. The state has somehow concluded that local hospitals’ psychiatric wards could handle the caseload, but no Southland hospital has said that is so.

As columnist Phil Kadner revealed recently, six mentally ill people spent two to four days in the ER at South Suburban Hospital over a weekend last month — a situation that’s apparently common and surely will get worse when the Tinley Park center closes. And that means fewer beds for those needing medical/surgical care at an ER.

This deadbeat state needs to cut expenses but not by casting out the mentally ill to
fend for themselves. That’s both callous and wrong.