FOLEY — Without more financial help, the region's main provider of mental health residential services could be forced to cut back after losing $4 million last year.

Tuerk Schlesinger, director of Alta Pointe Health, told Baldwin County commissioners Monday, Feb. 14, that his system is facing a shortage of money and employees as demand for services increases.

Alta Pointe provides 82 beds for mental health cases in need of hospitalization, he said.

Most of those beds go to patients who have been involuntarily committed by probate court orders and more than three quarters of those patients do not have insurance, he said. Alta Pointe's East Bay facility, which houses the patients, lost about $4 million last year, he said.

"About 21% of those patients have insurance," he said. "So, you tell me that Thomas Hospital, South Baldwin, North Baldwin is going to treat patients that have 21% insurance. There's just no way to continue to operate East Pointe Hospital at the losses of around $4 million a year. This year. I just got a text this morning. We're expecting to lose about $500,000 in the month of June."

Commissioners said the county does not have extra money to support the facility and no way to raise money unless the Alabama Legislature passes a tax or fee to fund the services.

"We're all faced with it everywhere," Commissioner Billie Jo Underwood said. "But figuring out who's supposed to pay for it is the bigger problem, in my opinion."

Schlesinger said some areas, such as Huntsville, pay for the increased cost of services through additional probate court fees.

"They saw a rapid increase in their populations, a rapid increasing in some of those problems that go along with more populations, and they figured out a way to try to solve that and Shelby County is doing the same thing," he said.

Commission Chairman Jeb Ball said commissioners and mental health representatives will schedule a meeting with members of the Baldwin County Legislative Delegation to discuss ways to pay for mental health services in the region.

Baldwin County Sheriff Huey "Hoss" Mack said that when he joined the Sheriff's Office in 1989, deputies might handle two or three involuntary commitments a month. Today, they often have as many as six a day. Mack said families will ask for help with a relative, but if the probate judge orders that person to be involuntarily committed, hospital space is often not available.

Until a bed can be found that person might be held in the Baldwin County Corrections Center. He said the jail does not have the facilities needed to hold mental health patients.

"We constantly have to fight with them," he said. "We constantly have to put them in the restraint chair. They're having to be handled in a way that is probably not the best for them. They would be better handled in a therapeutic type of environment versus in the jail."

Mack said the new jail wing now under construction will have mental health holding areas.

Schlesinger said many hospitals in the Mobile-Baldwin area have cut back on mental health services.

"Something that I think each one of the citizens should know is that there is no acute inpatient hospital for adults with mental illness in our whole southwest Alabama region," he said. "We used to have 277 beds. South Alabama used to have beds. Thomas Hospital used to have beds. Springhill had beds. Providence had beds. Charter Hospital had beds. There were a tremendous amount of hospital beds in this area. The reason why they've all dried up is none of the hospitals, acute care hospitals, want to have adult psychiatric beds because there is so much energy and care that goes along with that."

Schlesinger said Alta Pointe is working to meet the increased demand with fewer employees. Even though the system has paid about $4 million in salary increases and other incentives to workers Alta Pointe is about 350 employees short of the 1,950 needed to be fully staffed.