By Joe Jarosz
Northeast News

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster announced earlier this month an agreement with Ascension Health, LLC, in which Ascension Health will contribute $20 million over 10 years to support a new mental health assessment and triage center in the Northeast.

The proposed center is intended to offer triage, stabilization, and referral services for individuals who are experiencing a psychiatric or substance-abuse-induced crisis. It is the product of more than two years of collaboration by representatives of the Missouri Department of Mental Health, the Kansas City Municipal Court, Kansas City officials, the Missouri Hospital Association, and other community leaders.

The facility will be located at 2600 E. 12th St., in a building already owned by the Missouri Department of Mental Health. Kansas City has agreed to assume the cost of renovating the building for the project’s use. The location was chosen in part due to its easy accessibility for law-enforcement and emergency-medical personnel. Ascension’s annual donation of $2 million per year will represent a substantial portion of the center’s expected budget for the next decade. The project’s leaders continue to solicit additional contributions from other sources to fully fund the center. Project leaders hope to complete their work over the next 12 months and open the center by Sept. 1, 2016.

The $20 million fund represents the proceeds of Ascension’s sale in February 2015 of the St. Joseph’s and St. Mary’s hospitals to Prime Healthcare, a for-profit health care system. At the time, Koster argued that Ascension, a non-profit health care system, was obligated to reinvest the proceeds of the sale in the Kansas City area, as the hospitals belonged not just to Ascension, but to the entire community. Ascension agreed to set the $20 million aside until Attorney General Koster and Ascension were able to find a use for the funds that both serves the health-care needs of the people of Kansas City and is consistent with Ascension Health’s Catholic mission.

“The shortage of quality mental-health care services in Kansas City, especially for the indigent and homeless population, is nothing short of catastrophic,” Koster said. “The assessment and triage center will provide essential services to people who are too often left behind.”

The goal of the center is to alleviate the disproportionate burden that a small population of individuals suffering from mental-health or substance abuse issues places on local police, courts, ambulance, and emergency room services by providing targeted, specialized services to those in need. Those services will include a streamlined admissions process, up to 96 hours of inpatient stabilization services with access to necessary psychiatric medicine, referral to appropriate community resources, and meaningful follow-up.

Mayor Sly James said this project will turn an empty state facility at 12th and Prospect Avenue into a productive facility that will help the city and state to take better care of citizens who need these special services. Judge Joseph Locascio added the center is a complete game-changer for this population, “in that it provides major financial backing for a new Kansas City area assessment, triage and treatment referral center.

“During my 13 years as a Kansas City Municipal Court judge, I frequently see people with mental health and substance abuse problems cycle through the jail and hospital emergency rooms without getting the treatment they need,” Locascio said. This crucial resource will be available to our emergency responders to ensure some of our most troubled citizens will be stabilized and referred on for behavioral health treatment services potentially saving millions of taxpayer dollars each year since they will now receive the treatment they need.”