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Last year, Intermountain Healthcare‘s McKay-Dee Hospital in Utah opened a behavioral health center in hopes of reducing the number of patients who presented at the hospital’s ED with a behavioral health crisis—and officials say the investment is paying off, Maria Castellucci writes for Modern Healthcare.
In the years before the new center opened, from 2012 to 2017, McKay-Dee had seen a 33% increase in patients treated for a behavioral health crisis. According to Castellucci, most of those patients arrived in the hospital’s busy ED, where patients can often experience long wait times before they see a specialist.
To address the problem and improve care for behavioral health patients, Intermountain created the Behavioral Health Access Center (BHAC), a 24/7 facility located just across the street from the hospital’s ED.