Page 1 of 2
Regular Session, 2014 ENROLLED
SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 162
BY SENATOR BROOME
A RESOLUTION
To urge and request the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and the division of
administration to report to the Senate and House committees on health and welfare
why the operation of the Mental Health Emergency Room Extension (MHERE)
previously in operation from 2010 through 2013 at the Earl K. Long Medical Center
was not continued upon privatization of that hospital, and how such services will be
resumed in the community of Baton Rouge.
WHEREAS, from January 2010 through April 2013, the publicly operated Earl K.
Long Medical Center, assisted by the Capital Area Human Services District, operated a
Mental Health Emergency Room Extension (MHERE); and
WHEREAS, this Mental Health Emergency Room Extension served as a ten-to-
fifteen bed crisis receiving center where specialized staff provided a high level of screening
and assessment to people in behavioral health crises, in order to accurately connect those
patients to either acute or ongoing community-based treatment to diminish the recurrent
need for crisis services; and
WHEREAS, this MHERE served as a crisis continuum component that assisted law
enforcement, hospital emergency departments, and jails, as well as public and private sector
budgets, in dealing with increasing deinstitutionalization; the effects of increasing substance
abuse; and helping those returning to our communities from active combat; and
WHEREAS, within two years of operating ten to fifteen beds at a time at an annual
operational cost of one-point-six million dollars, this MHERE served more than thirty-four
hundred patients and saved the state more than twenty-point-six million dollars by avoiding
hospitalizations for more than sixty-five percent of the patients admitted to the MHERE; and
WHEREAS, in April 2013, with the privatization of the Earl K. Long Medical
Center, the MHERE was shut down and no longer operates in Baton Rouge; and SR NO. 162 ENROLLED
Page 2 of 2
WHEREAS, now other local hospital emergency rooms and parish prison facilities
are seeing a significant increase in admittance of people in behavioral health and substance
abuse disorder crises; and
WHEREAS, the original February 5, 2010, cooperative endeavor agreement entered
into by the state of Louisiana, through the division of administration and the Department of
Health and Hospitals, during the privatization of the Earl K. Long Medical Center, provided
that the state would work cooperatively with the Capital Area Human Services District and
the Department of Health and Hospitals, office of mental health to address the ongoing
provision of mental health services in the service area.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Senate of the Legislature of Louisiana
does hereby urge and request the Department of Health and Hospitals and the division of
administration to investigate and, on or before September 1, 2014, report to the Senate and
House committees on health and welfare why the Mental Health Emergency Room
Extension or a comparable facility was not continued in the privatization of the Earl K. Long
Medical Center, and how the department and the division plan to ensure that those services
are resumed in the community of Baton Rouge.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this Resolution be transmitted to the
secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals and the commissioner of the division
of administration.
PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE