The opening of a mental health day-treatment site has been delayed, and a planned pharmacy remains in regulatory limbo, a spokesman for Little Rock nonprofit Centers for Youth and Families said this week.
Issues with construction and furniture delivery have pushed back a mid-October target opening date for the nonprofit's new facility on Merrill Drive in west Little Rock.
Some outpatient services and antipsychotic injections are being conducted at the new site, but the area designated for day treatment isn't yet ready, said Bill Paschall, president and CEO of Paschall Strategic Communications.
The delays are a hiccup in the nonprofit's transition to its role as the designated community mental health center in south Pulaski County, for which the nonprofit has had a state contract since July.
"When you're relying on contractors and furniture folks, sometimes they don't quite meet the schedule they give you," he said. "They're close. It's close."
Little Rock Community Mental Health Center, the longtime holder of the state contract for indigent mental health care, didn't apply for that designation this year and closed on Sept. 23, citing financial struggles.
That provider's closure of its outpatient, day treatment and pharmacy services, as well as the shift to a new state-designated provider for people with low incomes, has unsettled mental health treatment for some people in that part of the county.
But the new Centers for Youth and Families offices -- which will effectively replace Little Rock Community Mental Health Center's services although the two were not affiliates -- are not fully online, Paschall said.
He expected some of the furnishing issues to be resolved either early next week or in early November, but he couldn't say which on Wednesday, calling it "a crapshoot."
State approval for a pharmacy, he said, could take from 30 to 90 days. In the meantime, patients who need daily medication are using "their own preferred pharmacy."
About 60 Little Rock Community Mental Health Center day treatment clients, many of whom have serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, also are being treated at a temporary 10th Street site run by the Centers for Youth and Families.
Mental health advocates in Arkansas have expressed worry over the loss of the Little Rock Community Mental Health Center, a decades-old provider that offered an array of services for people with mental illnesses and little means.
Since the closure, Luke Kramer, executive director of the mental health advocacy group The STARR Coalition, said he's heard from a few families who were "a little stressed" by the change, especially regarding the need for pharmacy services.
"One individual that I talked to ... they were afraid that there would be a lapse in their medication," he said.
At Express Rx on Cantrell Pharmacy and Compounding, staff members hung a sign welcoming Little Rock Community Mental Health Center patients, and pharmacist Kent Vinson said the business has seen a few clients from the closed facility.
"Some of them were kind of scrambling" to find a new provider, he said.
Paschall said he hadn't been closely involved with the pharmacy licensure process, and a call to the state Board of Pharmacy about the application was not immediately returned.
On Thursday morning near the forthcoming Centers for Youth and Families site, a cardboard box with a hand-lettered sign taped to it sat on a sidewalk, pointing the way to the offices.
Much of the area was under active construction. Almost all rooms on one side of the building were empty of furniture, and flooring had not been laid in several rooms that were visible through windows.
In a more finished office and waiting room across a hall, staff members were at work, and about 20 people had signed in that day for outpatient appointments.
Metro on 10/18/2019