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Welcome To the Latest Issue of eNews!
February 11, 2010 vol 1 issue 4 Welcome to La Crosse County’s eNews. Our purpose is to keep the people of La Crosse County better informed about your County government. County government has not always been as visible as some other levels of government. So we’ll provide eNews you can use like upcoming dates for public hearings, health clinics and reminders about deadlines for dog licenses and ordinance changes. We’ll provide detailed information about our budget, highlights of innovations and achievements and updates about critical issues facing the County, like how certain actions of the State & Federal governments will affect County services and County property taxpayers. We also want the people of our County to have a chance to learn more about the inner workings of County government by providing access to the Monthly Report to the County Board. On an alternating basis, roughly half the departments report each month on the most compelling statistics, activities and challenges confronting our staff working to provide the best in public service. Link to Monthly Reports. We hope you find La Crosse County eNews helpful and informative. If you have any suggestions how to make it better, please let us know using our email links at the bottom. eNews You Can Use! Tuesday, February 16th Primary Election
* Court of Appeals District 4 * County Board Supervisor - Districts 23 & 29 * Town of Onalaska Supervisor IV * Bangor School District Referendum The CARE Center The State of Wisconsin gives counties the responsibility of taking care of their residents who are experiencing a mental health or substance abuse crisis. The typical way for a county to do this is to work with law enforcement to detain, evaluate, and commit those in need to inpatient psychiatric beds at one of our two hospitals, or to state mental hospitals. Here in La Crosse County, we commit more people than other counties our size. Most of those (80%) are released within a day or two, as they do not require that level of care. We recognized a few years ago that we had to do something different. First, we developed a Mobile Crisis Response Team, who is called out by law enforcement to help them evaluate a situation and find the best solution for each person. That has helped us communicate with the police and the sheriff’s department, and has given us all a better understanding of the crises. However, it wasn’t reducing the number of commitments from La Crosse County. At the beginning of 2009, we pulled together 120 different people in the community to try to find a better way. We had law enforcement, mental health providers, both hospitals, local government, and consumers get together and talk about different ways of handling the situation better. We came up with what we believe to be a much better way to deal with it: the Crisis Assessment, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Center. The Center will be run by Tellurian, a mental health provider from Madison who runs several other centers throughout the state. Now, people in crisis can be evaluated at the CARE Center and many will stay there rather than go to a psych ward or a state hospital. While they are there, the staff will work on setting them up with programs and people right here in La Crosse so that they can be released when they are stable. Not only does this approach save money, it will result in better outcomes for those in crisis. It will be far less traumatic for them to stay here. It will also benefit the hospitals, as it will free up their emergency room and psych ward staff to give their attention to those who really need it. The CARE Center is scheduled to open in March. We are eager to try this innovative, humane approach to crisis. County Board Supervisor Sharon Hampson
Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Commission Update In November 2008, the County Board approved Ordinance 67 of the General Code of La Crosse County which called for the formation of the a Joint City/County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Commission. The purpose of the EMS Commission is to establish standards and develop a contract for Emergency Medical Services in the County of La Crosse. More specifically, the duties and powers of the EMS Commission include:
The commission has met three times since the fall of 2009 and monthly meetings have been scheduled for the remainder of the calendar year. At its initial meeting in October, the commissioners elected Mayor Mike Giese from the City of Onalaska as the Commission Chair. A work group has been established to draft a new contract for ambulance services to replace the former contract which expired in 2007. The Commission has provided to the work group three guiding principles as they develop the new agreement; 1.) No financial subsidy from La Crosse County will be available, 2.) The contract should be performance based to include standards for response times in three distinct areas of the County (Urban, Suburban and Rural) and 3.) The contract must contain Quality Assurance and Clinical Quality Oversight standards. The work group is expected to report back on its progress at the next EMS Commission meeting which will be held on Wednesday, February 24th at 4:00 p.m. in Room 3220 of the County Administrative Building. County Board Supervisor Tara Johnson
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