OPINION: City hospital snubs solution to drunks
Won't someone rid us of these troublesome drunks? The sheriff will, if the city's hospital will act with common sense.
Perhaps it's urban myth, all this talk about the high cost of drunks in a city with no drunk tank. We keep hearing stories like this: Each homeless person costs the community some $40,000 a year, mostly associated with drunken visits to emergency rooms. We're told how the loss of a former drunk tank in February, which was no longer financially sustainable, is draining local emergency rooms that wind up caring for drunks.
We're told the city-owned Memorial Health System is the biggest victim of all in the loss of The Lighthouse Assement Center detox facility.
Memorial Chief Operating Officer Jason Fahrlander explained that a routine ER visit by a drunk costs the hospital $400, and considerably more if complications are detected. Hospital officials complain their emergency personnel care for eight to 10 people a day who belong in a drunk tank.
If that's true, the hospital spends roughly $4,000 a day treating drunks. That means it will lose about $1.46 million a year because we have no detox center. That's a financial crisis in need of immediate attention.
Enter Sheriff Terry Maketa who is adding on to the jail with the help of federal money he receives for incarcerating illegal immigrants. Maketa has offered to design part of the expansion to host detox beds, and he asked for money from the local hospitals that would benefit from those facilities. He asked for a total of $570,000 annually to help pay the cost of running the detox center.
Because Memorial officials claim to care for most of the drunks, they have been asked to contribute $400,000 - about $1.06 million less than the drunks purportedly cost them each year. Penrose-St. Francis, a Catholic hospital, was asked to contribute $170,000 a year. As a private enterprise, Penrose can spend as it pleases. If drunks cost our city hospital $4,000 a day, however, the reaction by Memorial officials to Maketa's requests should have been enthusiastic and swift. Memorial belongs to the taxpayers of Colorado Springs, and that means it has a civic duty to minimize wasteful spending. If Memorial is spending $1.46 million a year on drunks, it had best jump at any reasonable solution that comes along.
But that's not what happened when Maketa made his proposal. Instead of cooperation, the sheriff was given bureaucratic runaround. As the hospital hemorrhages cash on drunks, Maketa barely detects a pulse among those who manage Memorial's money. Frustrated, Maketa announced Tuesday he would proceed with construction without inclusion of detox facilities. He said hospital officials had not responded to a written request for communication he sent two weeks ago.
A joint statement from Memorial and Penrose said: "As good stewards of our resources and good business leaders, Memorial and Penrose-St. Francis needed time to look over the project and discuss the requested amounts."
A statement professing good financial stewardship on the part of Memorial comes off as a joke. This is the city enterprise that was quick to offer $250,000 to the U.S. Senior Open golf tournament last year in return for 200 "free" tickets for employees and friends. It's the city enterprise that paid an executive $242,000 to retire a year early, in a slumping economy, in order to promote another employee. It's the city enterprise that hired a new $550,000 CEO last year for $105,000 more than it was paying the previous CEO, a 33-year employee. It's the city enterprise with an executive payroll that has more than doubled since 2002, as profits have fallen. It's the city enterprise Councilman Jerry Heimlicher criticized for having "ineffective financial management and oversight."
Considering Memorial's track record of questionable financial responsibility, it's a little hard to swallow the argument that Sheriff Maketa has been blown off in the interest of financial stewardship. They can't be serious. Maketa - a reputable man who answers to the public - has offered to solve a $1.46 million problem for a mere $400,000.
Do the simple math, city hospital. Take the deal. Take it now, if it's not already too late.
