Mental health system adds to ED burden
Among the key challenges that have developed in the past 20 years — and have not yet been addressed — is the failure of the community's mental health system, according to James J. Augustine, MD, FACEP, director of clinical operations at Emergency Medicine Physicians, an emergency physician partnership group in Canton, OH.
"We have a large number of patients now in the ED who have mental health or chemical dependency needs, and no plan to find alternate sources or sites of care for that group of patients," he reports. "So, as an industry, we have essentially accepted the burden of caring for the mental health needs of the community even though our physical structures and the personnel we hire have not been set up to manage that group of patients."
The ED community has to recognize and address this problem, he says. "We have to come out and say this [community] failure has unloaded these patients on us and our medically trained staff and beds are not the right place for these people to be," Augustine says. "We should use that approach as the emergency leaders and uniformly say this compromises the care of the acute medical and trauma patients who don't have another place to go."
The burden ultimately should fall on the leaders of the community mental health effort, he says. "They are the ones that, acting with the support of the hospitals and emergency providers, can go to the bigger community and say their mental health system needs be funded," says Augustine. "In places where that has occurred and appropriate tax levies and other support systems have been developed, the community emergency mental health system is intact and that group of patients is not a burden on EDs."
Among the key challenges that have developed in the past 20 years and have not yet been addressed is the failure of the community's mental health system, according to James J. Augustine, MD, FACEP, director of clinical operations at Emergency Medicine Physicians, an emergency physician partnership group in Canton, OH.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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