Co-Chairs:
Andrea Cooke, MSW
Dennis Hopkins, Psy.D
Attendees:
Dennis Hopkins, Andrea Cooke, James Kellermann, Executive Director of CallforHelp, Inc.,
Greg Donathan, Assistant Deputy Director of Hospital Operations.
Andrea called the meeting to order at 10:04am. At the last meeting James Kellermann and Dan Wasmer agreed to find out where the mental health beds are in Illinois. Dan sent a list of hospital beds in the state from 2015, but was unable to attend the meeting. James found a website - CountyHealth Rankings.org. James explained that on this website he found, one can put in the name of the state and the year and you will get the number of mental health facilities in the state. However, James stated that he did not know if the data was from the 2010 census. An example that James gave was if you put in Cook County the ratio of people to mental health facilities is 440 to 1, or 440 people for each mental health clinic.
Dennis asked if we knew how well that served the population of Cook County. James said that that figure is better than figures for the rest of the state. Dennis said we should be able to compare with other states. He also said we need the breakdown of urban vs. rural. James then said that the big thing will be to see where they're pulling their data from. James was going to assign this task to his intern to work through the data. He said Dan's list looks like it is from 2017. James said the big thing is to see is to find a database that is continually kept current. He said he needs to find out how often this website is updated and whether they're just drawing from older statistics.
Dennis returned to Dan's maps and he said they are drawn from the sewer system by University of Chicago. It is not based on the census, he says, because stats would have to be adjusted accordingly. Dennis said looking at the Kankakee area a huge variable in this process is insurance. James said if they're getting their data from NPI (National Provider Identifier) it is automatically updated. Dennis interjected that this data is from 2015 and he said that if your hospital is going by insurance, the data is skewed.
James said he might try to go into the NPI registry and see what updates he can find. Dennis said that what is happening is people are ending up in the ER because they're aren't beds. James said we might not be able to find every piece of evidence we can use. He will look into the NPI Registry for more current information. Dennis requested that we ask members to turn their work in if they can't attend the meeting.
Andrea asked if we have done all we can today with the other members not present. James said yes. A motion to adjourn the meeting was made. Greg Donathan seconded the motion. Andrea adjourned the meeting at 10:46am.
