Richmond, Va., Sees Shortage of Mental Health Beds in Richmond; Connecticut Mental Health Facilities Face 25% Vacancy Rate for Pharmacists

Hospitals and rescue squads in the Richmond, Va., area this week employed a "regionwide emergency plan" to find beds for "acutely ill psychiatric patients," the "latest sign of the worsening shortage" of psychiatric beds in the region, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. The plan, used on July 16 for the first time since it was devised in February, calls for all psychiatric patients in the Richmond region who "can't be handled" by a hospital's emergency room to be transported to an adequate facility capable of treating them. Finding available space for mental health patients has proved difficult for many hospitals since the Capitol Medical Center in Richmond, which contained 62 psychiatric beds, was closed earlier this month. Jon Donnelly, executive director of Old Dominion Emergency Medical Services Alliance, which helps coordinate operations between hospitals and rescue squads, said, "I wouldn't say it's a crisis, but it's on the verge of being a crisis."

The Path to a Potential Crisis
In 1999, the state-run Central State Hospital closed 30 beds for "acutely ill" patients and began diverting them to private hospitals and community mental health programs in an effort to allow the state to "devote its resources to treatment of long-term mental patients" and those "committed by the judicial system." However, another hospital closure later that year combined with this month's sale of Capitol Medical Center has left the region with 200 fewer psychiatric beds. According to Donna Katen-Bahensky, chief operating officer of the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, which operates Medical College of Virginia Hospitals, the removal of Central State's acute care beds has particularly affected poor and uninsured people, leaving them without "a lot of options." She added that the key to boosting the number of available beds in the region was to increase mental health funding. "No hospital is adequately reimbursed for mental health services. If this was a business anybody wanted to be in, there would be plenty of beds," she said (Martz, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 7/19).

Connecticut Pharmacist Shortage
In other mental health news, pharmacists who work in Connecticut mental health facilities "say they are underpaid and overworked and that the quality of the work they do is suffering," the Hartford Courant reports. A group of pharmacists and union members on July 18 asked state budget officials to increase staffing and wages, with officials from the New England Health Care Employees Union saying that state mental health and other facilities have about 25% vacancy rates for pharmacists and that their wages "lag the private sector by about $11 an hour" (Julien, Hartford Courant, 7/19).