State officials on Thursday announced more details about their plan to eliminate waitlists for inpatient mental health treatment, including new community-based services and expanded housing options.
A shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds has long forced some patients to spend days in emergency departments, waiting for mental health care. A federal judge has ordered New Hampshire to end that practice by next May.
That order came about after a group of New Hampshire hospitals sued the state over what’s often called “ER boarding.” But at a news event Thursday, stakeholders including the New Hampshire Hospital Association and state health commissioner Lori Weaver pledged to work together to fix the problem.
“We have the same goal: to get people with complex mental health needs the right service in the right place,” Weaver said.
Weaver and other officials said they’re targeting three main drivers of the problem. The first is making sure people in crisis can get better care in the community, so they don’t wind up at the ER unnecessarily.
As part of that, the state is working with community mental health services to strengthen their services. That includes launching two new short-term stabilization programs for people in mental health crisis this fall.
The crisis stabilization programs — at Laconia-based Lakes Region Mental Health Center and the Center for Life Management in Derry — will allow people to stay for up to 23 hours, as an alternative to hospitalization.
“Every single time we get a call to go out into the community or see someone right here, that's one less person that we're seeing at the hospital,” said Vic Topo, the president and CEO of the Center for Life Management, which hosted Thursday’s press event.
State officials are also trying to address the shortage of inpatient capacity, by helping fund the construction of a new, 120-bed behavioral health hospital in southern New Hampshire and five new emergency psychiatric beds at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.
That additional capacity won’t come online for another year or more — state officials expect the Dartmouth-Hitchcock beds to open in fall 2024, and the new hospital to take its first patients in early 2025. (Another 33 mental health beds at the state-run New Hampshire Hospital in Concord are currently closed for renovations. Weaver told NHPR last month that she hopes to reopen those beds around the end of the year.)
Shorter-term, officials say they’re trying to make the existing system work more smoothly, by hiring new coordinators who can connect people who need inpatient treatment with available beds more quickly.
Finally, some patients are staying in the hospital longer than medically necessary because of a lack of transitional housing and other options to discharge them to — what officials call the “back door” problem.
The state has funding to create 20 new transitional living beds outside of hospital settings, and is working with landlords and municipalities to provide more permanent supportive housing for people with serious mental illness.
Associate Commissioner Morissa Henn said the Department of Health and Human Services analyzed multiple points from the state’s 10-year mental health plan, and prioritized the ones that would have the biggest short-term impact.
“These are all components aligned with the 10-year mental health plan that allow us to move swiftly and with great intention around how we can eliminate this problem quickly,” she said.
If you or someone you know is struggling with a mental health crisis, you can call or text 833-710-6477 for New Hampshire's Rapid Response Access Point.
