photo by: Journal-World Graphic

The Douglas County Commission meets in the historic courtroom on the second floor of the county courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St.

The Douglas County Commission agreed Wednesday to subsidize the hiring of three new psychiatrists for $350,000 — a move that one official said would allow about 1,100 more people to get the mental health treatment they need in 2019.

The subsidy will allow Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center to hire a new full-time psychiatrist and will allow Lawrence Memorial Hospital to hire two psychiatrists who will work part of the time on contract for other agencies, said Bob Tryanski, the county’s director of behavioral health projects, at the commission’s meeting. One of the new psychiatrists at LMH will spend 50 percent of his or her time working for Bert Nash, while the other new LMH hire will work 50 percent of the time for Heartland Community Health Center, he said.

In 2019, the subsidy will cover 60 percent of the salary and benefits of the full-time Bert Nash psychiatrist and will pay for 60 percent of the cost of the work the LMH psychiatrists do at Bert Nash and Heartland, Tryanski said.

Bert Nash CEO Patrick Schmitz said that the new hires would allow LMH, Bert Nash and Heartland to treat about 2,300 patients next year, up from about 1,200 in 2018. The number of actual appointments would grow from about 9,000 to about 15,000, he said.

Tryanski said the plan was developed from lessons learned during the past year as Bert Nash and Heartland each attempted to fill two psychiatrist positions and two behavioral health physician’s assistant positions. The county had allocated $900,000 for that purpose in its 2018 budget, but the two agencies had difficulty recruiting and retaining the staff. Bert Nash did, however, hire a new psychiatrist and a new physician’s assistant, Tryanski said.

Schmitz said those two hires and the new psychiatrists who will be hired in 2019 would make it much easier for services to reach the uninsured and underinsured. Those seeking psychiatric counseling also would be able to get treatment much sooner, decreasing the chances they would develop crisis conditions requiring hospitalization, he said.

Tryanski said the subsidy was meant to help the new psychiatrists with startup costs and support as they built their practices. He proposed that the subsidy decrease to 50 percent in 2020 and to 40 percent in 2021.

Fire Medical talking points

Also at Wednesday’s meeting, Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical officials recommended several points for county leaders to discuss with the City of Lawrence as the two governments renegotiate their joint funding agreement for the emergency services department.

Department Chief Shaun Coffey and Tom Fagan, chief of administration for the department, said one point of emphasis should be the difference between emergency medical services, which the department provides throughout the county, and fire services, which the department provides within the city.

Specifically, Fagan said, EMS calls have grown at a much faster rate than fire calls. Between 1997 and 2017, the number of fire calls per year rose by 1,137, while the number of EMS calls per year rose by 3,937, he said. That increased demand for the countywide EMS service needed to be addressed when developing an equitable cost-sharing formula, he said.

Coffey and Fagan also proposed clarifying how the costs of station improvements are shared and reviewing the costs associated with coroner investigation services and the fire department’s technical rescue team, which deals with such things as water rescues and extrications at vehicle accidents.

Interim County Administrator Sarah Plinsky and Assistant Lawrence City Manager Diane Stoddard said that the negotiations would also have to address side agreements for such things as county 911 dispatch service and relationships with the Baldwin City, Eudora and township fire departments. That complexity was one of the reasons the agreement hasn’t been reviewed since 2000, Stoddard said.

Plinsky and Stoddard told commissioners they would start meeting next week to develop guidelines for the coming negotiations. They would share those with commissioners in January, they said.