Tricia Brannen

Please oppose this bill and instead, I ask and encourage you to consider changing the focus of HB 1372 to study our need for community resources, such as transitional housing for the patients in the state psychiatric hospital for adults that are stable and medically ready to be discharged but have nowhere to go. Our state does not need more inpatient psychiatric hospital beds. However, we do critically need more community resources so that people ready for discharge from the state psychiatric hospital can live, work, and thrive in their community. I would like to share a chart from NH DHHS showing the amount of people at New Hampshire Hospital who are ready for discharge every day but have no place to go. The legend at the bottom of the chart shows you what each line represents, Stable Patients, Stable Patients Three Months Moving Average. You can click this link to view the chart: https://wisdom.dhhs.nh.gov/wisdom/dashboard.html?topic=mental-health&subtopic=mission-zero-adult-mental-health&indicator=mission-zero-inpatient-discharge-barriers#tabnavbarid As you can see from this page, the average number of patients medically stable and ready for discharge at our state psychiatric hospital is 100-115 per day out of 185 total beds. We have plenty of hospital beds, we just don’t have appropriate resources for the patients who are ready to leave the hospital. I am not sure if you are aware, but it costs the state of NH about $1,600/day/person when a person is stable at New Hampshire Hospital as their insurance cannot be billed. That calculates to about $160,000/day for the patients waiting to be discharged. Another important fact is that the numbers reported are only for people ready for discharge that have been waiting at least 15 days. So, 100 patients who are stable, and ready for discharge but do not have a place to go, if they are waiting a minimum of 15 days, that is $2.4 million! Wouldn’t it be much more cost effective to study the feasibility of creating more resources, i.e. housing for the folks who are ready for discharge, allowing all those beds that are now occupied by people who do not medically need to be there for the patients who critically need care, some of whom are boarding at emergency rooms around the state. Finally, I would also like to encourage and ask you to consider adding up to four more people on the commission, that would include, at the very least, a patient representative and a representative from the medical and/or a mental health profession. I urge you to please consider the above important information. I know this committee would not want to waste time on something that absolutely isn't needed and instead focus this feasibility study on critical needs for our NH residents. Thank you.