RANDOLPH, Vt.— It’s no secret that both New Hampshire and Vermont lack a sufficient number of beds for people suffering mental health crises, forcing emergency rooms at local hospitals to serve as holding stations while patients wait for a bed in an appropriate facility.
With New Hampshire down to 168 beds at New Hampshire Hospital and Vermont’s 45 beds spread across the state psychiatric hospital, Brattleboro Retreat and Rutland Regional Medical Center, those emergency room stays can be lengthy.
It’s also well known that people experiencing mental health crises do not receive the care they need while they’re waiting, because local hospitals generally don’t have staff members trained in mental health care.
Less well known, however, is the impact this ad hoc arrangement has on the hospitals.
A person in mental health crisis who has been involuntarily admitted to a hospital and forced to wait for transfer to appropriate treatment can create any number of problems, including endangering staff, creating financial burdens for the hospital, undermining morale of hospital employees and diverting resources from other patients’ care.
Both states are taking steps to address the chronic shortage of beds, but neither expects the problem to disappear soon. In the meantime, the issue is very much on hospital administrators’ radar.
“If you’re at the state level and at the regional level, you’re hearing about the cost of health care,” said Barbara Quealy, chief operating officer at Gifford Medical Center in Randolph. “This is a piece of it, especially with such limited resources.”
