XFERALL began working with Tennessee mobile crisis teams, acute hospitals, and behavioral health facilities in late January 2022. Almost immediately, our hospital and clinician partners saw decreased placement times for their patients in psychiatric crisis.
Tennessee’s statewide average wait time for psychiatric placement for a patient in an acute hospital emergency department is estimated at 25 hours (more than a full day and night). Using XFERALL, our partners have been able to get patients accepted into psychiatric treatment in 52 minutes. The fastest accept time is 5 minutes and 4 seconds.
One mental health crisis team used XFERALL to secure treatment for an adolescent experiencing a psychiatric crisis. Using XFERALL, the team made a placement request to all facilities that met the clinical criteria for the patient. Within 13 seconds, the crisis team had an initial response from a behavioral health hospital indicating interest and capacity. The crisis team and the hospital communicated over the XFERALL platform, sharing needed clinical information, and the patient was accepted for transfer in 21 minutes 33 seconds. A process that previously took hours was reduced to less than 22 minutes, improving the quality of care for the patient and eliminating the distressing experience of boarding in a hospital emergency department.
Prior to the deployment of XFERALL, the process would have looked very different and had very different results. The hospital emergency department clinicians would call the mental health crisis team responsible for providing emergency mental health assessments for their county, and a mental health crisis clinician would call all the behavioral health facilities one-by-one to determine which facility had bed availability and then send a series of faxes to those facilities to identify which one could accept the patient. This laborious, manual process would take hours, and with each hour that passed, the risk would increase of the patient’s condition worsening and of the patient abandoning treatment altogether.
XFERALL eliminates inefficient, manual processes and replaces them with an automated, streamlined process that delivers more timely care for patients in psychiatric crises. No one should have to wait for care in an emergency. Seconds count for patients experiencing a heart attack, stroke, or other serious physical health condition. The same is true for individuals in emotional or psychiatric crises. With XFERALL, crisis teams, hospitals, and behavioral health facilities can communicate and share information in real-time so that patients in crisis can more quickly get the behavioral health treatment they need.
Contact XFERALL today or schedule a demo directly to see how we can help you more efficiently manage the placement of behavioral health patients.