Patients falling through system’s cracks

BY WENDY BIRD

With the hope of providing more seamless care to those who deal with mental health disorders and addictions, more than 150 people who work in the field met recently at a two-day health summit in Greater Sudbury.

“We will look at opportunities and challenges so we can move forward over the next few years and develop a more integrated recovery-orientated system,” said Marion Quigley, executive director of the Sudbury Branch of the CMHA.

“The Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN), both locally and provincially, have stated addictions and mental health services are a priority.”

The North East LHIN hosted the summit in partnership with the Northeastern Ontario Addiction and Mental Health Service Providers Planning Group. Those in attendance included addiction and mental health consumers, board members, physicians, consultants, managers and directors.

Determining the best course of action for the integration of addiction and mental health services in the northeast was the primary focus of the summit.

Hospitals are currently dealing with unprecedented numbers of addiction and mental health patients who have been placed in acute care beds because there is nowhere else in the community for these patients to receive care.

“A significant proportion of people often have concurrent mental health and addiction problems. And many times, those people fall through the cracks between two very important systems,” said California psychiatrist Dr. David Mee Lee, discussing his experiences with successful integration plans.

“How can we best serve people who have substance abuse problems as well as mental health problems? Not everyone comes in with one diagnosis across their forehead. It’s important... for health-care systems and mental health and addictions services to be sensitive to a significant population of people who don’t quite neatly fit into our current service system.”

Mee Lee said, “So if a person truly has a concurrent disorder — a mental health disorder and an addiction disorder — you want to treat it holistically, all at the same time. That’s the importance of services taking a holistic look at people so that they are not bouncing between systems ... it gives people the chance to get their needs met in an integrated way. This improves the likelihood of a better outcome.”

Christine Bois, a concurrent disorders priority co-ordinator with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health spoke at the summit about provincial changes in her field during the past five years and how the provincial system is responding to the needs of people with concurrent disorders.

“The North East LHIN is really working in advance of the (13) other LHINs in bringing mental health and addictions together to collaborate and to look at what kind of integrative mechanisms you can develop,” she said.

North East LHIN chair Mathilde Gravelle Bazinet noted “when we group partners together (we can hopefully) address how we can really make the system seamless for our patients.

“For the patient that ends up in emergency because there is no service available to him or her on the weekends or in the evening, how can we provide a more integrated system where that patient doesn’t have to end up in emergency and in an acute care bed?”

More information about the health summit can be downloaded at www.nelhin.on.ca.