The San Diego County Board of Supervisors will decide on Tuesday when to implement a new state law that expands conservatorship to include people with serious mental illness or severe substance abuse disorders.
Counties across California have a two-year window to implement the new law.
Supporters, including San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, have said the law will help reduce the number of homeless people on the streets who are unable to care for themselves, but medical professionals in the region say their hospitals and facilities are at capacity and unable to handle a potential influx of new patients.
“We can’t just use the hospital as a dumping ground for society’s social problems,” said Chris van Gorder, CEO of Scripps Health.
Van Gorder is appealing to regulators to delay implementation of the law until January 2025.
“Now you’ve got this whole new population, and it’s going to create a real problem for hospitals in terms of being able to adequately care for emergency patients, let alone this new population,” Van Gorder said.
However, there are those who disagree with Van Gorder, including Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, who said the county had plenty of time to prepare for the new law.
Lawson-Remer said mental health is an urgent crisis and the law should be implemented as soon as possible.
“I’m just concerned, frankly,” Lawson-Remer told NBC 7. “Everybody has known for months and months and months that this was coming and we should have had a plan in place. We should not have waited until the due date – the dog ate your homework – to make a plan.”
Supervisor Jim Desmond said he understood the concerns of the area’s medical leaders, but also that he didn’t think waiting a year would make much difference.
“We’ve got to turn it on at some point, and this one-year reprieve to me – I don’t think a lot is going to get done in a year,” Desmond said.
San Diego Sheriff Kelly Martinez has also publicly stated her position that the implementation of the law should be delayed, saying that she needs enough time to train deputies on the new law. A spokesperson for Sharp Healthcare said in a statement to NBC7 that implementation of the law on 1 January 2024 would “significantly impact our emergency departments, which are already seeing record volumes.