Patients facing mental health crises are waiting in a Wichita hospital hallway because psychiatric wards are full. Inmates in the Sedgwick County Jail wait up to a year to get transferred to the Larned State Hospital simply for evaluations. And hospital workers get choked, kicked or yelled at by people who can’t get intensive mental health care. Hospital administrators told lawmakers at a hearing Tuesday that a lack of mental health services and overcrowding puts both patients and health care workers in danger at hospitals in south and central Kansas. “The money we’ve spent and the space we have created has been grossly overwhelmed in recent years with the need,” said Robyn Chadwick, president of the Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph Hospital in Wichita. “We do need help.”
Source: KCUR News
