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March 28, 2024 9:53 pm
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Nevada State Mental Health Center In Overton Closed

By Mike Donahue

Moapa Valley Progress

The Moapa Valley state mental health office in the Overton Community Center has been closed, at least temporarily, forcing local patients to drive or be transported to Mesquite for treatment.

The closure, which started in September when the mental health tech who ran the office took an extended leave of absence and later resigned, affects 18 current mental health clients from Moapa Valley and is based on the dire condition of the state budget, according to Elaine Krows, program director for the Nevada Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services (MHDS). Krows oversees several Southern Nevada mental health facilities including those in Pahrump, Laughlin, Mesquite, Caliente and Moapa Valley.

“We have some major budgetary issues,” Krows explained, which MHDS in Southern Nevada hopes to be able to address at least in part by closing the Moapa Valley office.

“Whether the office in Moapa Valley reopens or not is strictly a budgetary concern,” Krows said. “We will save money by having the Moapa Valley office closed.”

There is, however, some disagreement about just how much money will be saved when everything is taken into consideration such as the costs of transporting patients back and forth to Mesquite, said Jacqueline Cordaro, the mental health tech who staffed the Moapa Valley office until earlier in October when she resigned.

MHDS first began providing treatment for local residents in 1999 when patients would travel back and forth to Mesquite. At one time there was a full-time therapist assigned locally. A full case load for a full time person is 75 people which seems to indicate there were at least that many patients getting treatment in the valley at one time.

Eventually, MHDS saw the need for a Moapa Valley office and it opened in 2005.

In 2006 Cordaro was hired as an administrative assistant to staff and operate the office in Overton and was eventually promoted to mental health tech II. During her tenure, between 2006 and this year, patients received treatment from a licensed clinician who visited the Moapa Valley office from Mesquite every other week, a medical person who came down once a month and by “tele-med” with a doctor once a month.

Cordaro said the system seemed to function well until September when she began a long medical leave.

“I started my leave on Sept. 2 and by Sept. 8 all the active medical records had been removed from the office in the Community Center and taken up to Mesquite,” Cordaro said.

Krows said moving the records quickly was done to ensure no break in treatment for patients and had nothing to do with closing the Moapa Valley office.

“We closed the office while the mental health tech was on leave and almost immediately began transporting clients to Mesquite,” Krows said. “Honestly, what we’ve found is we can roll the phone lines over (so a local Moapa Valley call rings in Mesquite), transport those people to Mesquite where they can see a doctor face-to-face rather than tele-med and they can participate in group therapy. The only real drawback is the travel time they have to spend in the car. I believe the services they receive far outweighs the travel time.”

Cordaro, however, insists that there’s more to it than travel time.

“The patients get picked up in Overton and they’re forced to spend to the whole day in Mesquite,” she said. “They don’t transport according to the needs of the patients, it’s done for the convenience of the Mesquite office. If different patients have to travel on different days, if the van or whatever has to come here more than once a week, that’s just more costs.”

Cordaro also disputes Krows’ insistence that the office was closed to save money.

“My position isn’t being eliminated,” Cordaro said. “There are no expenses for office space since it’s donated by the county and MHDS is keeping the phone lines up. If anything, transporting all these people back and forth is going to be more expensive.”

Krows said, however, there is a big budgetary difference in paying a mental health tech to work with a Moapa Valley case load of 18 people, when that person could have a case load of 75 in Mesquite.

Cordaro admits that keeping the office open would be to her benefit since she only resigned her position when she was told she was going to be forced to commute to Mesquite.

“They notified me Sept. 24 they were closing the Moapa Valley office and I was being reassigned to Mesquite,” she said. “Although I offered to try to work with them, even to work part time, I was told no, so I resigned the first part of October.”

Krows said Cordaro resigned the day she was scheduled to return from leave so “we just left the office closed.”

“While she was gone we looked at our budget and found things were going very well transporting people,” Krows said. “We actually needed her to come up to the Mesquite office. While it didn’t make sense to reopen the Moapa Valley office, we could have used her up here.”

Cordaro is adamant that her fight against closing the Moapa Valley office is not about her personally.

“It’s really a question of keeping the services local,” Cordaro added. “The goal should be to provide services for people in the community in which they live.”

Moapa Valley residents will have an opportunity to weigh in about the local office when MHDS conducts a town hall meeting scheduled Oct. 28 at 2:30 p.m. in the Mesquite City Hall Chambers, 10 E. Mesquite Blvd. The public is invited and encouraged to attend.

According to its website, MHDS’s mission is to develop and operate programs that assist individuals who have mental illness or developmental disabilities to live as independently as possible.

A division of the Department of Health and Human Services, MHDS is one of the largest human services agencies in Nevada, employing more than 1,800 in eight agencies located in Las Vegas, Reno and each of the rural counties.

There are approximately 30 employees in the Carson City central office. Together they provide oversight to all eight MHDS agencies across Nevada serving about 26,000 mental health clients and 4,500 developmental services clients. By statute, the Division is responsible for planning, administration, policy setting, monitoring, and budget development of all state funded mental health and developmental services programs. The Division administration is also directly involved in decisions regarding agency structure, staffing, and program development.

In addition to coordinating the work of its agencies, MHDS staff work with many stakeholders including family members, advocates, service providers, legislators, law enforcement and the general public.

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