Brewer questions Bellevue's medical focus and homelessness among mentally ill
Council Member Gale Brewer asks whether Bellevue's 104 beds are all medical and how many mentally ill patients are homeless. Otonichar explains the PACE unit at Bellevue serves comorbid psychiatric and medical needs and says 31% of homeless patients have serious mental illness.
Thank you very much.
Two questions.
One is, maybe I misunderstood Bellevue.
I've been to the new wonderful facility twice, I think, with Dr.
Katz.
There are 104 beds.
I thought they were 100% medical.
Is that incorrect?
That's what he told me.
No, that's true.
Everyone there has complex medical needs.
It's just the PACE unit is for individuals who have those medical needs as well as significant psychiatric needs.
Okay, so there is a medical component to it.
Yes.
Second, how many people do you know within the categorized as mental illness are also homeless so that when they are released, they're going back to, I don't know what.
Yeah, so we actually do have that analysis from January through June of this year.
31% of our homeless patients also have serious mental illness.
So 31% would be homeless and mentally ill is what you're saying.
Yes, and I will say the way we categorize homelessness, it's self-reported by patients, whether they didn't have housing before they entered or likely to be unhoused on release.
Okay, that's a pretty high percentage, 31%.
It's just higher than the general population.
So about 28% of people on Rikers right now.
So when they get released, they're going somewhere.
So that means that medication may not be easy to obtain.
prescription to the pharmacy of their choice and then if they're enrolled they can also leave with medication maybe my colleague wants to no but i know this population they they don't go where they're supposed to go
yeah they do lead yes complicated lives they don't we do prescribe walking medications for people to take with them as well
So individuals who receive mental health treatment upon their release from custody, if they're being released from Rikers Island, will come into the clinic and we make available, as my colleague mentioned, we'll make available physical medication so they can leave with some medication in hand.
We also have a variety of different resources.
To your point, our port line, which is the peer-staffed hotline, we often have patients or providers working with those patients call in and we reroute prescriptions.
So, for example, if they are no longer able to get to the pharmacy that originally made sense, we also proactively call patients where we have contact information to remind them about the pharmacy where those prescriptions were sent.