A Lehighton borough official would like to see a discharge plan for behavioral health patients once they are discharged from a hospital.

Councilwoman Autumn Abelovsky expressed reservations at Monday’s borough council meeting with how the patients are discharged from St. Luke’s Lehighton Campus.

Abelovsky said she’d like to see the hospital have a discharge plan for patients once they are discharged from mental health, so they have somewhere to go.

“We’re going to have people sitting on our streets roaming the streets,” Abelovsky said.

Abelovsky said that while painting windows recently in the borough, she heard one person in particular yelling at customers as they were about to enter a business in the borough.

She said the woman had said she was discharged following a stint as a behavioral health patient.

Borough police Chief Brian Biechy agreed it’s an issue that should be addressed.

“The handwriting is on the wall,” Biechy said. “Once they convert to behavioral health, we’ll probably be getting more.”

After the meeting, Abelovsky expounded on her thoughts.

“Our concern is we want the patients who are being discharged from (behavioral health) to have a discharge plan,” she said. “I have mentioned this to the police chief, he said this is happening more and more often.”

Abelovsky said especially when St. Luke’s turns to a full behavioral health.

“Right now, it’s just a behavioral health wing,” she said. “When there’s a full facility, we’re going to get more people from out of the area.”

Abelovsky said she’d like to see the borough, police department and St. Luke’s have a meeting so they can share their concerns and work together to come up with a facility that can help those behavioral health patients who don’t have a place to go upon being discharged.

Contacted Thursday morning, Joe Pinto, chief operating officer for St. Luke’s Lehighton Campus, said, “There is a process that happens for discharge to make sure that the patient is ready for discharge, and the whole plan including transportation, follow-up mechanism.

“There’s a big process that happens before a patient is discharged; a team assesses that patient in all different aspects, including transportation, what’s the next level of care, whether that’s outpatient treatment or partial programs,” Pinto said.

“We have an extensive process that goes on. We take it very seriously, and each patient has an individualized plan.”