PANAMA CITY — Publicly funded beds at mental health facilities are too few to handle the volume of individuals in need of inpatient services, according to local behavioral hospitals.
The state funds 10 beds in the 14th Judicial Circuit; two of those beds are reserved for children.
Officials at Life Management of Northwest Florida and Emerald Coast Behavioral Hospital say more state-funded beds are needed in to handle the number of individuals who need in patient services. Life Management has a handful of publicly funded beds; all beds at Emerald Coast are privately funded.
“We have 20 beds,” said Tricia Pearce, communications director at Life Management of Northwest Florida. “A facility like ours can have up to 30 beds, so we could have 10 more and we can easily fill those 10 beds.”
At least 50 public psychiatric beds should be available per 100,000 population, according to a study by Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit organization that promotes laws, policies and practices for psychiatric care, treatment and research. In 2005, only 17 beds were available per 100,000 population in the country and 42 of 50 states hadn’t met the minimum goal for publicly funded beds.
Because of the shortage, patients are forced to seek treatment at local hospital emergency rooms or be sent outside of the county if beds are unavailable.
“That happens quite a bit with Life Management and Emerald Coast,” said Jep Stokes, director of business development at Emerald Coast Behavioral Hospital. “Then, what happens is the patients have to be displaced to either Tallahassee or Pensacola. It’s happening more now than ever before.”
Both facilities regularly operate at maximum capacity and have given more than $3.6 million combined in charity services over the past year, according to respective officials.
Although patients in crisis aren’t turned away from care at the emergency room, seeking help at the ER often results in unspecialized care when the patient should be at a mental health facility.
“On average, we see around 240 mental health patients in our emergency department per quarter,” said Bay Medical Center Sacred Heart spokeswoman Christa Hild. ”We may have an additional 20 per quarter that are admitted to the hospital.”
Gulf Coast Regional Medical Center did not provide information on mental health patients. Neither hospital has a mental health wing.
Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee is another alternative for Baker Act patients to receive publicly funded services. The hospital has 490 civil beds — beds for individuals who have been involuntarily placed into in-patient care under legislative “Baker Act” provisions — and are currently at capacity, according to Alexis Lambert, spokeswoman at the Department of Children and Families (DCF). The hospital has identified 67 of those individuals as “ready for discharge;” however, there is still a waiting list.
Because of the waiting list, patients are admitted based on the date of referral and placement on the waiting list, according to Damonica Rivas, DCF communications director for the northwest region.
When the hospital remains full, patients in need of more specialized care continue to occupy beds in local facilities for that period of time; in turn, other local patients are prevented from gaining access to inpatient care.
“We have people that end up staying here longer than intended because they need to go to the Florida State Hospital for better treatment, but [sometimes] the hospital doesn’t have enough beds,” Pearce said. It could take several months for an opening at the hospital, she said.
The state determines how much funding is given per bed by using a historical data of need by circuit and region.
“We stay full a considerable amount a time,” said CEO Tim Bedford at Emerald Coast Behavioral Hospital, noting that when the private hospital accepts Life Management’s overflow patients, other patients may have to be sent to another facility.
“The ideal situation is for our area to get more funding for the Crisis Student Unit beds; that would help tremendously,” he added.