Abby Bedard, in her room in the emergency department at Redington Fairview General Hospital last July. At the time, she had been stuck in the hospital with nowhere to go for 200 days. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Health experts on Monday urged lawmakers to reduce the number of children languishing in hospital emergency rooms — often for months — while waiting for placement into mental health treatment facilities.

Several spoke in favor of the bill sponsored by Sen. Joseph Baldacci, D-Bangor, during a hearing before the Legislature’s health and human services committee. The proposal would, among other measures, create three “crisis centers” where children could stay after being discharged from a hospital emergency department while comprehensive treatment solutions can be arranged.

The high demand and shortage of mental health services in Maine can sometimes result in children waiting for long periods to get into treatment, especially residential treatment.

The bill, LD 791, would also require the state to increase mental health services capacity by creating a “psychiatric residential treatment facility.” And the bill would improve Medicaid reimbursement rates for hospitals that are housing children waiting to be discharged to treatment.

There is not yet a fiscal note to show how much the bill would cost.

No one spoke in opposition to the measure, but Michelle Probert, director of MaineCare Services, said in a letter to committee members that the Mills administration is opposed largely because it has several similar initiatives in the works.

Sue Bedard, whose 13-year-old daughter Abby spent 304 days at Redington-Fairview General Hospital’s emergency department before being discharged to a treatment facility in Orono in October, said she’s “hopeful” Baldacci’s bill will pass.

“Abby went through so much,” Bedard said in a phone interview Monday. “If there’s facilities to send these kids to so they’re not in the emergency department, that’s a big win for these kids.”

Bedard said her daughter’s behavior has improved dramatically since October, when she moved to Treats Falls House residential treatment in Orono.

Abby Bedard, who has cerebral palsy, was dealing with numerous mental and developmental health challenges, and needed to be hospitalized for her and her parents’ safety.

Abby Bedard, riding in a wheelchair being pushed by her father, leaves Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan in October. She had been at the hospital for 10 months before she received a placement. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Lisa Harvey-McPherson, vice president of government relations for Northern Light Health, the parent organization of Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and Mercy Hospital in Portland, testified in favor of the bill, saying that when pediatric patients are stuck in the ER, it’s counterproductive for their care.

“There is no therapeutic value,” Harvey-McPHerson said. “They simply deteriorate.”

Dr. Douglas Robbins, a MaineHealth pediatric and adult psychiatrist, said many of the children are in a “stark, cell-like atmosphere” while at the emergency departments.

“It’s a terrible misuse of health care resources,” Robbins said. There’s so far only two years of state data for how often this occurs, but the average stay for behavioral health pediatric patients cared for in an emergency department increased from 13 days in 2022 to 23 days in 2023.

Children languishing in hospitals without receiving Medicaid services was part of a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit filed last September that argued Maine was violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The lawsuit was settled late last year, but as part of the conditions of the settlement, Maine must show it is providing adequate services to children.

Probert, the MaineCare director, said in the letter to lawmakers that “we do not believe this bill will affect any meaningful change.”

“The root cause of the problem is a lack of behavioral health care service providers and available appropriate placements,” Probert wrote. “Department staff are already working directly with hospitals and providers to move children out of EDs as expeditiously as possible and are exploring avenues to improve the process of securing placements at children’s residential care facilities.”

Probert wrote that MaineCare has already launched or is in the process of opening “crisis receiving centers” which would serve a similar function to the “crisis centers” in Baldacci’s bill.