From staff reports



East Mississippi State Hospital and Central Mississippi Residential Center have made their stance on proposed state budget cuts clear: Closing mental health facilities is not the right way to reduce costs.

“Mississippi has a mental health care system that is second to none. So why would we want to cut one of the best systems this state has by closing facilities?” said Larry McKnight, assistant director and CAO of EMSH, at a joint legislative luncheon held by the two mental health facilities Tuesday.

The luncheon, EMSH officials said, not only served as a way to thank legislators and local government officials for their hard work creating a budget during slow economic times, but to give them a chance to hear both facilities’ commitments to being good stewards of state funds.

Both facilities said they realize that budgets will have to be cut and that they are willing to accept whatever cards are dealt. Officials from the two facilities said they could take steps to keep costs down for the state by implementing the community service based care model and using the state’s crisis centers.

Currently, EMSH operates nine group homes throughout a three county area, and McKnight said the cost reduction can be seen.

“Long before there was a new model for mental health care, EMSH has been here delivering community based services for nearly twelve years and has become a model facility for others following in our footsteps,” said McKnight. “It costs the taxpayers $100,375 per year to have on acute bed in an institutionalized setting, yet it costs only $35,770 to maintain a bed in the EMSH community services program.

“And better yet,” McKnight added, “60 percent of the individuals who complete our community service programs are treatment free for two or more years after completion. And of that 60 percent, 50 percent have been service free for more than four years.”

In Newton, CRMC operates four group homes, a day treatment program with individuals with Alzheimer’s, and a crisis center. CRMC officials said they have already taken an aggressive stance toward cost containment during fiscal year 2009 and were able to do so in part because of a pilot program that was instituted at CRMC’s crisis center.

According to CRMC Director Debbie Ferguson, the pilot program has been a tremendous success in keeping individuals in need of psychiatric help from having to wait in jail. The program focuses on accepting voluntary admittance, reduction in length of stay, increasing access and decreasing cost.

“On Oct. 19, letters were sent out to chancery courts, mental health providers and hospitals informing them of our ability to take voluntary admissions,” Ferguson said. “That afternoon we admitted our first voluntary patients and since then we have admitted 20 individuals on a voluntary basis. This has cut our length of stay from 33 days to 16 days. By admitting these individuals voluntarily, it keeps them from being locked up in a jail cell just because they have a mental illness.”

“Without a doubt, (the Mississippi Department of Mental Health) and its facilities will step up to the plate,” Ferguson said. “However, the savings to the taxpayers cannot come at the expense of putting individuals in jail for the ‘crime’ of mental illness.”

McKnight said: “We realize the task that legislators have before them. All we ask is that the budget not be balanced upon the backs of those who needs our help the most.”