Arrowhead Regional Medical Center’s Behavioral Health Service Delivery Model Program

About the Program

Category: Health (Best in Category)

Year: 2018

Arrowhead Regional Medical Center-Behavioral Health (ARMC-BH) is the largest provider of psychiatric emergency and psychiatric inpatient services in San Bernardino County for uninsured, under-insured, and Medi -Cal funded residents who possess serious persistent mental health issues. However, many hospitals and emergency departments (EDs) are struggling to ensure individuals with a suspected or potential mental illness receive a timely psychiatric evaluation and access to an appropriate level of treatment due to overcrowding in Emergency Department Triage units. ARMC-BH has successfully addressed issues related to psychiatric patients/overcrowding in our medical EDs by establishing a second portal of entrance for psychiatric patients in the hospital and providing psychiatric emergency services in a Behavioral Health Triage unit. Inter-agency efforts have significantly reduced the number of psychiatric patients arriving in ARMC’s Emergency Department. Approximately 90-95% of psychiatric patients are transported directly to the BH Triage unit, and once medically cleared, psychiatric patients arriving in the ED are immediately transported to Behavioral Health, thereby greatly reducing the level of burden on the medical Emergency Department, providing immediate and more appropriate care to patients, and reducing the number of reimbursable days spent on patients.