Johns Hopkins Medicine https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org is collaborating on a $45 million grant to change the way communities respond to a behavioral health crisis. People who experience a substance use and/or mental health crisis are often met by emergency teams poorly equipped to respond to their mental health issues.
Johns Hopkins Medicine and 14 other hospitals across Maryland received funding to initiate the Greater Baltimore Regional Integrated Crisis System (GBRICS), a five year initiative The hotline will deploy mobile crisis teams available around the clock to respond to people experiencing a crisis and help them safely stabilize and connect with healthcare services.
“It’s our responsibility as healthcare leaders to use evidence-based practices to design systems that address needs beyond those that are immediate. This is about changing and improving how our society engages with people and families experiencing a behavioral health crisis,” said Kevin W. Sowers, President, Johns Hopkins Health System and Executive VP, Johns Hopkins Medicine.
The initiative is going to provide a regional hotline with trained professionals who can perform assessment, de-escalation, and help schedule same-day appointments. The professionals will use technology to show treatment bed availability and open appointments across hospitals and community-based providers.
According to Mustapha Saheed, MD, Medical Director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, “Many crisis situations can be managed within existing outpatient clinical settings if people are able to immediately access care. This initiative will enable outpatient behavioral health providers to offer walk-in or virtual appointments for people who need immediate assess.”
The Greater Baltimore Regional Integrated Crisis System is being funded by Maryland’s Health Services Cost Review Commission’s https://hscrc.maryland.gov-Regional Partnership Catalyst Grant Program.
To sustain the initiative beyond the initial five year funding, the creators of the program hope to secure local government funding, expand existing support from the Commission, and establish an insurance reimbursement model to cover care interventions with the funding provided.