Pikes Peak Mental Health Detox unit closing

El Paso County's only detox program is shutting its doors Jan. 31, a move that could drive more of the area's homeless and dangerously drunken people into emergency departments and jail.

The Lighthouse, a Pikes Peak Mental Health program with 28 beds, has provided a place for the drunk to safely sleep their way back to sobriety. It's also a place where they can access counseling and find options for treatment of alcoholism.

Perhaps more importantly, it's been a gateway to helping some of the city's homeless with the most problems get off the streets. Local homeless advocates say the chronically homeless, most of whom are addicted to drugs or alcohol, consume an average of $54,000 a year in services.

The news came as a shock to local homeless outreach workers who have been operating on shoestring budgets to pull alcoholics off the streets and return them to a productive life.

Robert Holmes, executive director of Homeward Pikes Peak, an agency that has coordinated local efforts to reduce homelessness, said it's taken significant efforts to rescue even a few chronically homeless adults from the streets. To now lose 28 beds in detox feels like being on a stair-step machine, where climbing leads nowhere.

"I'm upset that the termination is coming so quickly and is coming without any other concrete plan," Holmes said. "It seems the bottom-line considerations overruled what's good for the community."

Holmes questioned whether the organization could have shaved enough costs from other programs or areas, at least to buy enough time for an alternative to emerge.

But Pikes Peak Mental Health says it's been operating at a loss for years and can no longer afford to do so.

For the past several years, Pikes Peak Mental Health has paid nearly half the cost of the $3 million program, with the other half coming from hospitals, law enforcement and other partners. The mental health group's half was considered a loss on the books each year, made up for through other areas.

Pikes Peak Mental Health blamed the closure chiefly on two things: El Paso County's decision in 2007 to cut its $209,000 share of the program, and the defeat in November of sales-tax measure 1A. Although the ballot measure did not itemize how the $75 million in tax money would be allocated, the organization was counting on 1A to provide $900,000 to detox for each of the next two years, and as much as $1.6 million after that.

Pikes Peak Mental Health's financial partners asked the agency to provide a scaled-back program with their dollars. But Joe Michaels, vice president of marketing and communications for Pikes Peak Behavioral Health Group, said it could not do that without jeopardizing the group's accreditation with the Joint Commission, an oversight body, and compromise the organization's standard of care. The Lighthouse has been a nationally recognized detox program. It also provides acute inpatient mental health care, and that program will remain.

Michaels said there's discussion about whether someone else could take on a program, even if it's a lesser one. Holmes said he was optimistic some program might emerge, especially if the partners continue to commit $1.6 million.

Memorial Health System, which already sees a steady stream of alcoholics pour into its emergency department, was going to provide $463,541 in 2009 to The Lighthouse.

Memorial spokesman Chris Valentine said Thursday that the hospital was still digesting the news and has not considered the possible impact of not having detox.

Holmes estimated that it will cost taxpayers more in the long run to have people with alcohol problems go to the ER instead of to detox.

Valentine said that Memorial and other funding partners in the detox program are looking for ways to keep some sort of detox beds running. If no program emerges, there will be no place for some 3,300 referrals a year.

The future is also uncertain for the 40 employees who work in the program. Michaels said.

Even before the announcement, detox beds in El Paso County were in far shorter supply than in other metro areas in Colorado. Denver and Pueblo each provide more than 1.5 beds for every 10,000 adults, compared with .44 per 10,000 in El Paso County.

One Colorado Springs man who credits detox with giving him a new life was dismayed by the news. Kevin C., who did not want his last name used because he participates in Alcoholics Anonymous, was a homeless alcoholic facing jail time for a disturbance when the police officer instead took him to detox. There, Kevin met a counselor who helped him find the Harbor House Collaborative, an intensive program that helps the chronically homeless find housing and get sober. Today, he has a good paying job and rents a house.

"We at Harbor House are very distressed this is happening. This is going to have a huge impact on the community" said its director, Jeannine Holt.

 
Numbers

A $3 million program
Pikes Peak Mental Health has paid nearly half the cost with the other half coming from hospitals, law enforcement and other partners.

Suggested causes
The county's decision in 2007 to cut its $209,000 share of the program, and the defeat of sales tax measure 1A.

Failure in November
The organization was counting on 1A to provide $900,000 to detox in 2009 and 2010 and as much as $1.6 million after that.