Feb. 04--A group of aldermen on Wednesday urged Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step up services for the mentally ill, saying many patients have fallen through the cracks since the administration closed half of the city's mental health clinics four years ago.
But the mayor's top public health official rejected the plan, saying the administration already is moving forward with its own changes.
The need for the additional services has been highlighted by the controversy surrounding recent police shootings, said Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th. He's the sponsor of an ordinance designed to beef up city mental health services, one that's backed by dozens of aldermen and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, the union for workers at the clinics.
"When we look at why we need to do this, it is very clear: The last set of incidents in our city, namely Laquan McDonald and the Quintonio LeGrier incident, were clearly issues where mental health was definitely the reason why these calls were made," Ervin said.
McDonald, a troubled 17-year-old, was carrying a small knife and had PCP in his system when Officer Jason Van Dyke shot him 16 times in October 2014. The disturbing police dashboard-camera video of the shooting death, released 13 months later at the order of a judge, showed the teen walking away from officers when Van Dyke opened fire.
As the controversy raged in December over the Emanuel administration's handling of the shooting, LeGrier, a troubled 19-year-old college student, was shot and killed by an officer responding to a call of domestic trouble at his father's home. Bystander Bettie Jones, a 55-year-old mother of five, also was accidentally shot and killed, police said.
"Our inappropriateness in handling those incidents have led and will lead to multimillion-dollar settlements on behalf of the taxpayers, which are definitely funds we could be using elsewhere to help our communities and better our city," Ervin said.
The West Side alderman's "Mental Health Safety Net" ordinance would require city mental health clinics to join three managed-care networks that fall under the umbrella of the federal Affordable Care Act. That would allow them to accept Medicaid-insured patients.
The group also wants the city's health department to hire more psychiatrists, ensure that the clinics provide adequate services and do a public mental health outreach campaign to let people know the services are available and to help remove the stigma of being treated for mental health problems.
Although he did not put a price tag on the additional services, Ervin said that between Medicaid reimbursements and federal grants, there would be no "direct cost to the city of Chicago."
But Dr. Julie Morita, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said that Medicaid reimbursements fall $375 short of what the city spends for each clinic visit by a mental health patient. So the city would have to spend more.
The Emanuel administration plans to enter into contracts with managed-care networks. But it opposes Ervin's ordinance because it would set a six-month deadline on establishing those contracts, which "takes away our negotiation abilities, because if the insurance companies know we have to have a contract in place by a certain date, we can no longer negotiate terms for our patients," Morita said.
Morita added that the city has hired a consultant to "facilitate" getting contracts but could not commit to a timeline for completing them. She also said the city recently hired a second full-time psychiatrist and is looking to hire four more but is having difficulty because of "a national shortage of psychiatrists."
As a result, the city is "reluctant" to do more outreach at this time, she added. "Until we have more permanent psychiatrists, we don't want to be too extensive in our outreach, because we don't want to overwhelm our system," she said.
Morita also suggested that people who have obtained insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act might want to look elsewhere for treatment because the city is mostly there to serve as a safety net for the uninsured.
"They can go elsewhere and get more comprehensive care," she said.
hdardick@tribpub.com
