LA County wants paramedics free to take psychiatric patients to mental health centers

Jan. 25--The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to sponsor state legislation to change a law that bars paramedics from taking patients to mental health urgent care and sobering centers.

Under the law, which was branded as "outdated" by one county official, paramedics are required to take patients with psychiatric needs only to hospital emergency departments or 9-1-1 receiving units.

Supervisor Janice Hahn, who introduced the motion to support the legislation, said the irony was that police officers and sheriff's deputies -- but not paramedics -- can take those who are intoxicated or experiencing a mental health episode to centers that can help them.

"This practice adds to our overcrowding in our emergency room," Hahn said of the state law. "I think it's time to alter that law."

Los Angeles County operates five urgent mental health care centers and one recently opened sobering center in Skid Row.

"We've hit upon an outdated provision," Department of Health Services Director Mitchell Katz told the board. "Sobering centers and mental health urgent care centers are more humane places to bring people."

They also are a less expensive and more effective way to care for patients, said Dr. Marc Eckstein, medical director of the Los Angeles City Fire Department. In 2015, the LAFD received 11,500 emergency psychiatric calls. The figure represents a steady increase, which Eckstein relates to several factors: an increase in the county's homeless population and decrease in the number of available psychiatric beds and mental health services.

"We certainly support the motion by the Board of Supervisors," Eckstein said. He said the Fire Department has just completed a pilot program that allows a nurse practitioner to accompany paramedics so that a patient with mental health needs can go to an urgent care center. In just a few months, more than 70 patients were taken to mental health urgent care facilities and received immediate help, Eckstein said.

The department is working to expand the program, he said. As it is now, a paramedic team will transport a patient with mental health needs to a hospital, and that patient may wait up to five days in that emergency department until a psychiatric bed opens up in one of the county hospitals.

"Obviously, the big caveat is the state is not comfortable and the safety code doesn't permit to transmit anyone anywhere except for a 9-1-1 receiving department," Eckstein said. "It's costing the taxpayers millions of dollars."

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