High cost torpedoes substitute detox plan

Just one day after the city's only detoxification program ended, organizers of a new program announced Monday they were abandoning plans to replace it.

That means area emergency departments will have to serve indefinitely as the region's only drunk tanks.

In December, Pikes Peak Mental Health announced it was ending its detox program at The Lighthouse Assessment Center because it could no longer afford to operate it.

Soon after, the Harbor House Collaborative stepped up with a plan to replace it with a new program that would have provided more beds but not the expensive medical services that had been offered by The Lighthouse.

The Harbor House operates programs for drug and alcohol abusers and the chronically homeless, but on Saturday, its board members decided a detox program would be too much to take on, said Board Vice President Robert Holmes.

"By the end of the meeting, I think we all came to the realization that the scope of this program was just too large," he said, adding that detox likely would have been a larger program than the group's other four programs combined.

The board also decided the program appeared too expensive for its budget.

For the last several weeks, a group of community members from various organizations - hospitals, law enforcement, and mental health providers, among others - has been working on plans for a detox program. Holmes said there's some talk within the group to have outside providers bid on running a local detox program.

He's confident a detox center similar to the one proposed by his group will open, but not anytime soon.

In the meantime, Memorial Health System and Penrose-St. Francis Health Services have prepared for a surge of intoxicated patients with nowhere else to go. When either Memorial Hospital or Penrose Hospital fills up, drunks will be diverted from one to another.

If both fill up, the hospitals plan to provide extra beds to handle the overflow. Penrose also will utilize beds at St. Francis Medical Center in northeast Colorado Springs.

Neither hospital system reached its capacity immediately after the closure of detox on Sunday night.