Texas health agency deck shows forensic patients taking a growing share of state hospital beds and a 296-day average from arrest to admission
The slide deck, authored by an HHSC deputy executive commissioner and hosted on the Texas Judicial Branch site in a file named for the Judicial Commission on Mental Health, describes what it calls a forensic shift: the share of state hospital capacity used by forensic patients grew steadily between fiscal years 2006 and 2018, with rising numbers of people found incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity. Forensic patients stay longer, 170 days versus 71 for civil patients on one slide, which reduces turnover.
Capacity figures show 2,432 total beds with 168 offline for staffing and infrastructure problems. A long-stay slide counts 762 of 2,245 beds (34 percent) occupied by patients with stays beyond 365 days, including 346 found incompetent to stand trial and 197 found not guilty by reason of insanity. The pre-admission timeline averages 296 days from arrest to admission, of which 249 are arrest to commitment, 15 are commitment to hospital notification and 32 are notification to admission.
The agency listed 338 beds being added, 130 of them maximum-security, and named capacity expansion, long-stay patients, other populations and the pre-admission process as opportunities.
Source: State Hospital System and Opportunities for Texas — Texas Judicial Branch, by Mike Maples, Texas Health and Human Services Commission
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