Word: smithburg
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...community is still very much in intensive care, but the mental health needs are crushing," says Donald Smithburg, head of the Louisiana State University Health Care Services division, which oversees the state's charity care system. The stress, he says, is felt beyond New Orleans. Emergency rooms as far away as Baton Rouge and Lafayette have mentally ill patients "boarding" for days in emergency rooms, waiting for hospital admission, because there are no available psych beds in the New Orleans area...
...patients or schizophrenics are hard-pressed to find someone to write up stronger medication. By some estimates, only 25 psychiatrists work in a city that used to have 350 to 400. The result is that regular health care in emergency rooms is backed up for hours - or sometimes days. Smithburg worries that a facility with new hospital beds (sorely needed in New Orleans) may have to be converted for mental health patients instead...
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