Travis County Hospital District officials are pledging to find ways to get more needy people covered by health insurance and to play a bigger role in helping pay for psychiatric emergency services and inpatient beds for mentally ill patients.

Board Chairman Clarke Heidrick said that when he campaigned for the hospital district in 2003 and 2004, he told voters it would tackle the lack of psychiatric emergency facilities and inpatient beds.

Travis County once had four private psychiatric hospitals and the Austin State Hospital. Now, it has one private hospital for people of all ages.

Travis County has gone over its bed allotment, especially after hurricane evacuees arrived, said David Evans, executive director of the Austin Travis County Mental Health Mental Retardation Center.

Hospital board members said they hoped the center could get that cost reduced. In the long run, maybe the hospital district could rent extra beds from the state hospital, board member Dr. Tom Coopwood said.

To explore possibilities, the board will convene a meeting by mid-December of officials with an interest in mental health, including Austin hospital officials whose emergency departments are now getting psychiatric patients when the state hospital is full. The board hopes to develop a plan for creating more bed capacity, along with the means to pay for it.

The board also said it wants to chip away at the chunk of uninsured people in Central Texas, where one-fourth of the population lacks health insurance.

Patricia Young, hospital district president and CEO, will look into redesigning the county's Medical Assistance Program. In the new budget, the board previously voted to boost the number of people in the program by 15 percent, to 10,679 people.

The board also asked Young to explore the possibility of a multicounty health insurance plan to take some of the burden off of Travis County's emergency departments and safety-net clinics. One idea involves splitting the cost of premiums with patients, employers and a local government, Young said.

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