A patient experiencing a heart attack or stroke who presents at a hospital emergency department is immediately prioritized for intervention because delays in care lead to poorer outcomes. Patients experiencing a psychiatric crisis, however, often wait hours, if not days, for appropriate treatment, despite delays in care leading to poorer outcomes.
For patients in psychiatric crisis, waiting for care increases the likelihood of:
Decompensation of symptoms and mental state
Need for involuntary medications and restraint
Elopement from the hospital
Self-harm in the hospital ED
Violence against hospital staff
Treatment refusal and therefore increased likelihood of a risk event within 48 hours of discharge, with the worst-case scenario being patient suicide.
Acute medical hospitals typically lack resources to appropriately manage a patient in psychiatric crisis internally and must find a behavioral health facility or program to which the patient can be transferred. This process of finding appropriate care can be time-consuming and administratively burdensome. One study documents an average length of stay in the hospital emergency department for psychiatric admissions of 18 hours, compared to 5 hours for non-psychiatric admissions. Others have estimated average ED wait times of between 6.8 hours and 34 hours for patients needing psychiatric treatment.
No patient in an emergent situation – whether behavioral or medical – should have to wait for help. XFERALL was created to help clinicians rapidly identify available care resources and get patients to that treatment without unnecessary delay or burden.
We’ve helped our partners in Tennessee secure transfer to inpatient psychiatric treatment in under one hour and in Georgia and Texas to well under two hours. We do this by eliminating the need for phone calls and faxes and giving clinicians the ability to request transfer to as many facilities as they deem appropriate with one single click and coordinating placement over a single app.
Read more of our results here and schedule a demo to see how we can help your team eliminate delays in accessing behavioral health care.