New Hampshire, hospitals resolve lawsuit over holding psychiatric patients in emergency rooms
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire hospitals and state health officials said Wednesday they will work together to solve the state’s longstanding problem of holding psychiatric patients in hospital emergency rooms, a move that ends years of litigation.
A federal judge who had in February
New Hampshire has long struggled with a mental health system that advocates say is overburdened at every stage, from the initiation of treatment to reentry into the community. Emergency room boarding, with people in crisis waiting days or weeks for treatment because of a shortage of inpatient beds, has become a flashpoint and focus of multiple lawsuits.
Judge Landya McCafferty’s rulings in February and May came in a lawsuit filed in 2018 by patients who argued they were involuntarily held in emergency rooms without opportunity to contest their detentions. She agreed with a group of hospitals that joined the lawsuit, saying the state was violating the rights of hospitals by seizing their property.
On Tuesday, there were 45 adults and four children boarding in New Hampshire emergency departments waiting for inpatient psychiatric beds, according to the New Hampshire chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
State health Commissioner Lori Weaver said she is committed to eliminating those waiting lists and urged all stakeholders to act with “urgency, unity and compassion.”
“We will achieve this important milestone by working with our partners throughout the health care system to increase access to mental health services for all residents,” she said in a statement.
Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, said his organization will be watching closely as changes are made over the next year. The group plans to continue its lawsuit related to probable cause hearings for those who are involuntarily detained.