Across the state of Colorado, psychiatric hospitals do not have enough space to care for all the teens who need to be stabilized because they are in crisis.
Most teenagers are admitted to an inpatient facility when the risk of committing suicide becomes so great that the fear is they might die if they are not admitted, said Frank Lotrich, medical director of West Springs Hospital in Grand Junction, the only psychiatric hospital on the Western Slope.
Axis Health System provides some inpatient care for adults in its Acute Treatment Unit at Crossroads in Grandview, but it cannot care for teenagers and children. Those patients must be transferred out of the area, said Molly Rodriguez, Regional Crisis Team and Acute Treatment Unit manager.
Axis is a private nonprofit health care system that provides physical and behavioral health care. It also serves patients in crisis across a five-county region at Crossroads.
In most cases, staff members at Axis work with families on how to safely care for their teens at home because it can be traumatic for teens and children to be placed in a psychiatric facility, said Stephanie Allred, senior clinical director. Even if the area had an inpatient facility, Axis would try to keep children and teens at home, she said.
“They need their parents and their caregivers and their natural family supports,” she said.
In 2016 and 2017, 8 percent of the 1,327 patients in crisis who sought care from Axis Health System were transferred to a psychiatric hospital outside the area. Children and teens accounted for 3 percent of the total, according to data supplied by Axis.
The psychiatric hospitals that accept teens and children are located in Grand Junction and on the Front Range.
Some patients in crisis must be held at Mercy Regional Medical Center for their own safety before they are transferred, said Paul Gibson, Mercy’s director of emergency services.
Mercy has one safe room for people who must be held for their own safety while they wait for a psychiatric bed.
If needed, other rooms can be made safe for patients at high risk for suicide by removing cords and any equipment that could be used as a weapon, Gibson said.
“We are not only protecting them from the equipment that’s in there, but we are also watching them as well. A lot of times, we’ll utilize what we call a sitter, who will just sit and watch the rooms,” he said.
On average, safe rooms are in use every day, said David Bruzzese, Mercy’s spokesman.
Mercy plans to remodel three new rooms for suicidal patients, where medical equipment that could be used in a lethal way can be easily stored behind foldable doors.
“We will have garage doors, essentially, that will fold down over all of that equipment,” he said.
Construction is expected to start Oct. 15. It will bring the total number of safe rooms to four. The rooms will be dual purpose so hospital staff can care for other patients in the spaces as well, Gibson said.
Patients in crisis may stay at Mercy for a few hours or a few days while they wait for a psychiatric bed elsewhere, he said.
In September, Mercy started providing mental health evaluations with psychiatrists for people in crisis via a live video chat through Specialists on Call, a company in Virgina, Gibson said.
Not all patients need to see a psychiatrist, but the service should eliminate some trips out of the area, he said. The psychiatrists will be able to see patients in the highest need throughout the hospital and prescribe them medication, he said. But they will not be able to provide ongoing care.
At West Springs Hospital in Grand Junction, where some local patients must go for care, there are 32 psychiatric beds to serve the entire Western Slope and areas of eastern Utah, Lotrich said.
Every morning at West Springs, staff members review a list of people who have been referred to the hospital and prioritize who can be admitted, he said.
“That triaging process is not a pleasant thing to do, and we would prefer not to do it,” he said.
There are times when patients can be admitted right away, but often, the hospital has a wait time of several days, he said.
Patients stay an average of 6.3 days at the hospital while they are evaluated and start treatment that can be continued outside the hospital, he said.
In December, West Springs plans to open a new 48-bed facility that will have a dedicated wing of 16 beds to serve teens, and the new beds should help reduce wait times, Lotrich said.
A state Crisis Steering Committee recommended in a formal report in June that the state Department of Human Services increase the number of beds for teens and children. The committee was not charged with determining how that should be done.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
