East Carolina University’s Center for Telepsychiatry and e-Behavior Health (CTeBH) www.ecu.edu/cs-dhs/telepsychiatry is working to meet the state’s need for telemental health services in the state. To effectively provide mental health services, CTeBH with funding from the Duke Endowment, established the North Carolina Statewide Telepsychiatry Program (NC-STeP) www.ecu.edu/cs-dhs/ncstep and continuines to expand the operation.
The Office of Rural Health within the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services www.edu.edu/cs-dhs overseeing NC-STeP, is making it possible for individuals coming to the emergency department with an acute behavioral health crisis to receive a timely specialized psychiatric assessment via video conferencing.
Sy Atezaz Saeed, MD., Chair Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University www.ecu.edu/cs-dhs/med took part in a panel discussion held at the MATRC 2016 Summit www.MATRCSummit.org that discussed a number of issues involving state funded telehealth initiatives.
As Dr. Saeed explained, “It is often difficult to recruit and retain mental health providers in rural and underserved communities and as a result, the quality of mental health services available to patients in rural and under-served communities rushed to the emergency room is not adequate.
He described how NC-STeP is dealing with amazing advances using telepsychiatry. Dr. Saeed said, “CTeBH as the home for NC-STeP, has brought 74 hospitals into the network, with 57 live, and 17 hospitals in the process of joining the network.”
Eventually the NC-STeP program anticipates connecting 80 or more hospital emergency departments to provide psychiatric assessments and consultation to help patients linked using telemedicine to connect with emergency departments.
NC-STeP has developed a telepsychiatry portal www.ecu.edu/cs-dhs/ncstep/portal.cfm describing a group of separate but related technologies that serve as the primary interface through which data is collected, reviewed, and organized regarding patient telepsychiatry encounters.
The portal schedules patients, exchanges clinical data, collects encounter data to support the needs of network managers and billing agents, provides timely referrals, and links to the North Carolina Hospital Association Psychiatric and Substance Abuse Bed Board.
Also the program hopes to create collaborative linkages and develop innovative models of mental care with not only EDs and hospitals, but with community-based mental health providers, primary care providers FQHCs, and public health centers.