Mental Health UCCs Were Supposed to Ease the Burden on Emergency Rooms. Do They?

With a shortage of mental health professionals leaving too many patients without resources when they desperately need them, emergency rooms have been seeing far more patients presenting in emotional distress than ever. As JUCM News readers may recall, a smattering of urgent care centers and mental health providers have sought to help ease that burden by establishing UCCs dedicated to patients’ behavioral health. According to an article published by Cambridge Day in Massachusetts, though, Community Behavioral Health Center has done little to reduce the flow of patients reporting to the nearest ED with mental health concerns in spite of having performed 1,161 evaluations in the urgent care center and handled 1,048 phone calls during its first 3 months of operations. The clinic is open 12 hours a day Monday through Friday and 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday, with the phones staffed 24 hours a day. And even though the number of patients reporting to the new behavioral health UC continues to grow, there’s been no decrease in similar patients reporting to the ED. If anything, the data suggest that the existence of more resources may encourage more individuals to seek help, even if the intended benefit of reducing the load in the emergency room hasn’t been realized yet.