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Community mental health leaders tell lawmakers bed shortages stem from complex discharge and staffing problems, not just bed counts
Summary
Leaders from Riverwood Center and Bay Arenac Behavioral Health told the House oversight subcommittee that inpatient‑care challenges reflect staffing, patient acuity and discharge barriers, and urged renewed bed‑registration, crisis stabilization funding and improved care transitions.
Rick Compton, CEO of Riverwood Center (Berrien Mental Health Authority), and Chris Pinter, CEO of Bay Arenac Behavioral Health, testified to the House Oversight Subcommittee that inpatient psychiatric capacity issues reflect more than an absolute count of beds — they said staffing, patient acuity, protective‑custody admissions and lack of step‑down placements are central barriers.
Compton described Riverwood’s local system and said the community mental health center provides crisis lines, a behavioral‑health urgent care, mobile crisis teams and hospital prescreening. “There is no one solution,” he told the subcommittee, and he identified several practical gaps: insufficient step‑down placements for physically aggressive consumers, providers unwilling to accept the most severe cases, and a decline in state hospital capacity for some populations. Riverwood reported meeting short‑term prescreening time targets and high rates of 7‑day follow‑up for discharged patients but said broader system funding shortfalls remain.
Nut Graf: Both CMH leaders urged lawmakers to revive statewide bed‑registration or coordination tools, expand crisis stabilization funding and mobile response capacity, remove bureaucratic placement barriers for difficult consumers, and consider policy changes to serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) whose behaviors complicate hospital placement.
Pinter said counties have effectively become a default public safety net for psychiatric emergencies: “We essentially serve as the 9 1 1 for anybody in the public who needs to go to a hospital,” he told the committee. He described prescreening operations that function as a central triage and credited local coordination with higher local bed occupancy where strong hospital‑CMH relationships exist.
Both witnesses warned of funding and administrative pressures: Compton said some legislative appropriations have not reached CMHs as expected and raised concerns about rate rebasing and contract rebids that could disrupt service networks. They recommended expanding crisis stabilization units, restoring a statewide bed registration function (previously part of a MyCare project), increasing psychiatric intensive and step‑down capacity, and expanding health information exchange (MIHAN) coverage for mental‑health and substance‑use records to improve placements.
Ending: The committee adjourned with agreement to continue oversight; CMH leaders offered to work with lawmakers on operational proposals and data for mapping beds and capacity across counties.
