Crisis Center to open Dec. 9

COEUR d'ALENE — Don Robinson spent more than 20 years in the FBI, so people sometimes ask how he became the manager of the upcoming Northern Idaho Crisis Center.

But his work in the FBI and now for the crisis center are not so different in one significant way.

While investigating crime for the FBI he also specialized in crisis hostage negotiation. And only 2 percent of the calls he and others in that field go out on actually involve a real hostage situation.

"The other 98 percent were crisis intervention," said Robinson, who was an FBI supervisory agent in Coeur d'Alene from 2005 to 2012 before retiring from the FBI in August. He also worked in Moscow, Russia, before retiring.

Robinson spoke Thursday to the Kootenai County Reagan Republicans at Fedora Pub and Grille.

"We would run into folks who were in the midst of a behavioral health crisis," said Robinson.

The Coeur d'Alene center is scheduled to open Dec. 9 on the Kootenai Health campus.

The adults-only crisis center will be Idaho's second such facility. The first opened in December last year in Idaho Falls.

The Coeur d'Alene facility will employ approximately 15 to 17 people, including security, nurses, case managers and mental health specialists, Robinson said.

It will be open 24 hours a day and have 20 beds, half for men and half for women. Clients aren't charged for services.

Center workers will assess patients with mental illnesses and substance-abuse problems and help them access community resources. The patients will stay less than 24 hours.

Robinson said communities that have crisis centers experience reductions in suicides and costs for jail stays and hospital emergency department visits.

"We're trying to provide a safe alternative for people who are in a crisis, that will address their mental health needs in a morally responsible way — that will also be fiscally prudent," he said. "We're going to save some money here."

The Idaho Falls facility saw 714 clients in the first six months, he said. In that time, only 33 were referred to higher level care.

"What that means is close to 700 folks came in (to that facility) in some sort of crisis that would have either gone to an emergency room or gone to jail — and they were able to divert them," Robinson said.

Claudia Miewald, Kootenai Health's director of behavioral health, said in the past 15 months the hospital has seen 3,881 patients for behavioral health issues. Of that number, 43 percent were admitted, she said. The crisis center could help those who are not admitted.

"So you can see there's a large number of individuals that we sent home with safety plans," Miewald said.

Miewald said an emergency department visit costs on average between $1,200 to $1,500.

"That's probably on the conservative side, depending on if somebody needed tests," she said.

Robinson said the Idaho Falls community saved approximately $290,000 in the first six months its crisis center was operating.

"We're assigning a dollar value to something that didn't happen," such as money the jail there didn't spend housing people with a mental illness or drug problem, he said.

Meiwald said how much money is saved on Kootenai County's indigent fund with the crisis center open will be tracked.

Kootenai Health donated the space for the crisis facility, which will be in the Moody Center, a building on the campus known as the former Panhandle Health building. The building already houses offices for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare's mental health services.

The Idaho Legislature budgeted $200,000 for the initial startup in Coeur d'Alene. The center is funded for just over $1.5 million annually for two years.

Leaders in law enforcement, such as Kootenai County Sheriff Ben Wolfinger, have been proponents of opening a center in North Idaho.