Directors to vote on money for detox center

About 800 people end up in Lee Memorial Hospital's emergency department each year for detoxification.

Southwest Florida Addiction Services has room for only 19 intoxicated people at a time. When the detox facility's beds are full, other at-risk people are typically taken to nearby Lee Memorial, said Jim Nathan, chief executive officer of Lee Memorial Health System.

Law enforcement officers "have to take them somewhere. They don't want them in jail, either," Nathan said.

The intoxicated people are often "disruptive" and are sometimes kept in the emergency room for days until they can be placed in the SWFAS facility, he said. Most do not need medical treatment, he said.

The not-for-profit substance abuse program needs a bigger home, and Nathan wants Lee Memorial's board of directors to help build one.

The hospital system's board of directors will vote Thursday on Nathan's proposal to give the addiction services agency $75,000, doled out in $25,000 increments during the next three fiscal years. The money would go to help the agency build a larger facility on Evans Avenue in Fort Myers where the YMCA building used to sit.

"It costs a lot more than $75,000 to detox these people, and very few (intoxicated people) are admitted here," he said last week during the board's finance committee meeting.

The finance committee unanimously approved the proposal, but the entire board has the final say.

It can cost several thousand dollars to clear alcohol or drugs from someone's system, said Kevin Lewis, executive director of SWFAS.

That means Lee Memorial likely spends more than $800,000 per year detoxifying people.

The city of Fort Myers has leased the Evans Avenue lot, which is adjacent to Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center, to Southwest Florida Addiction Services for $1 per year, said Mayor Jim Humphrey, who is also the attorney for Lee Memorial.

Humphrey said he hopes to convince city council members to agree to purchase the 27 acres where Southwest Florida Regional sits when the hospital moves to its new campus in 2008. He wants to create a center of social services agencies such as the Salvation Army and American Red Cross so people in need can make one stop to take care of everything, he said.

The first step is the new detoxification facility, he said.

Southwest Florida Addiction Services plans to build a 40-bed, $8 million detoxification facility on the 4.5-acre Evans Avenue lot, Lewis said. So far, the agency has about $1.5 million in cash for the project, he said.

"With Lee Memorial's approval, that's another piece of the puzzle," he said.

Also Thursday, Lee Memorial's board of directors will vote on whether to buy two tracts of land in Estero that are near the 22 acres the board purchased a year and a half ago. The two tracts, which equal about 10 acres, would cost about $9.4 million.

That would give Lee Memorial plenty of land to build some sort of medical complex in Estero, Nathan said.

The Lee Memorial board of directors meets at 2 p.m. Thursday in meeting Rooms 1A and 1B at HealthPark Medical Center in Fort Myers.