An individual’s behavioral health care needs don’t end when they are discharged from an inpatient stay. Treatment along a continuum is likely needed. This treatment may include partial hospitalization, residential treatment, or ongoing outpatient therapy.

An individual’s behavioral health care needs don’t end when they are discharged from an inpatient stay. Treatment along a continuum is likely needed. This treatment may include partial hospitalization, residential treatment, or ongoing outpatient therapy.

XFERALL is expanding its service area to include Arkansas.

“2022 continues to be a year of growth and expansion for XFERALL,” said Nathan Read, CEO, XFERALL. “More hospitals, behavioral health providers, and community organizations are using XFERALL to deliver a proven solution to the increasingly difficult problem of placing behavioral health patients in appropriate treatment quickly. Today, we are pleased to announce that Arkansas behavioral health providers and facilities will have access to the platform.”

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.

Beginning July 16, a single national 988 number will be available for anyone facing a mental health crisis. Callers from anywhere in the country can call 988 and get connected to trained crisis counselors. The phone line will be staffed 24/7 and is free and confidential.

XFERALL is working with state mental health agencies and other stakeholders to encourage use of our platform by 988 responders so they have in-the-field ability to identify locally available treatment options.

Each week in May, designated as Mental Health Awareness Month, XFERALL will share a new blog to raise awareness of the ongoing need for behavioral health care investment and highlight XFERALL’s work with partners to eliminate barriers to treatment and reduce delays in care.

XFERALL’s chief clinical officer, Shana Palmieri, LCSW, will give a special presentation at the District of Columbia Hospital Association’s Opioid Response Symposium in April. Two of XFERALL’s co-founders called DC home and spent time working in one of the busiest hospitals in the nation’s capital. Drawing on their work together, they combined their clinical and information technology expertise to create XFERALL with the sole purpose of solving one of the most intractable problems in health care delivery today – timely placement of patients needing behavioral health care in treatment appropriate for their condition, need, and demographics.

Between 2016 and 2020, the number of children and adolescents diagnosed with mental health conditions skyrocketed, according to a new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study published in JAMA Pediatrics. The number of children ages 3-17 years diagnosed with anxiety grew by 29 percent and those with depression by 27 percent.

The Washington Post also recently profiled families’ growing struggles to get essential behavioral health care for their children – a situation that was challenging before the pandemic and is now dire.

Endorsement as a preferred vendor to help hospitals reduce wait times for behavioral health patients

March 15, 2022 (AUSTIN, Texas) – XFERALL and Hospital Council – Northern & Central California, which represents nearly 200 hospitals throughout California, have partnered to bring XFERALL’s real-time technology as a preferred solution to help reduce delays for patients in accessing crisis and inpatient behavioral health treatment.

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.

Chris Leonard, MSW, LCSW, host of Conversations About Student Mental Health, talks with XFERALL’s chief clinical officer, Shana Palmieri, LCSW about the crisis in children and adolescents’ mental health and how XFERALL helps schools, mobile crisis teams, and acute hospital ED clinicians place pediatric patients in needed treatment faster.

People experiencing a psychiatric crisis -- considering suicide, for example -- need immediate psychiatric help. But, unless they have done something physically to attempt suicide, such as overdosing on pills, they very likely do not also need emergent medical attention. Yet, too often, a 911 call for help ends with EMS transport to the hospital emergency room, and only hours, and sometimes even days, later is the individual transferred to an appropriate behavioral health facility.

Partnering with XFERALL makes timely, direct transport by EMS to behavioral health facilities possible, allowing patients experiencing a behavioral health crisis to avoid unnecessary and, often, lengthy and untherapeutic hospital ED stays.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – January 31, 2022

The District of Columbia Hospital Association (DCHA) and XFERALL, the nation’s leading mobile patient transfer platform, have entered a partnership that offers DC hospitals a new process for transferring acute and behavioral health patients to clinically appropriate health care facilities.

The District of Columbia Hospital Association published this article in its Jan. 24 member newsletter. Below is an excerpt.

The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) in August last year identified boarding times for patients in hospital emergency departments as at an “all-time high.” This is for all patients waiting to be transferred to a different facility for needed treatment, whether a behavioral health facility or hospital providing a higher level of acute care.

With a national crisis in pediatric mental health, XFERALL is particularly proud of its partnerships that reduce barriers to behavioral health treatment for children and adolescents. Since 2019, XFERALL has facilitated the transfer of thousands of children and adolescents experiencing a behavioral health crisis to clinically appropriate inpatient treatment. Our placement time for children and adolescents is less than three hours, compared with the national average of more than eight hours.

National Rural Health Day celebrates the “Power of Rural” and highlights the essential role rural health care providers play in their community.

XFERALL first launched in Texas, home to more rural hospitals than almost any other state. Our work in West Texas with acute medical hospitals, behavioral health facilities, law enforcement, and the local mental health authority reduced area wait times for inpatient psychiatric treatment by more than 80 percent…..

Hospitals of all sizes across the country are experiencing an unprecedented workforce shortage. The shortage is particularly acute for nurses, and hospitals are facing annualized contract labor costs in 2022 of more than $400 million above pre-pandemic levels and almost 4 percent higher than 2021 amounts.

The pandemic’s prolonged strain on hospital capacity and resources caused nurses and other staff to resign, demand significantly higher wages, or take higher paying positions with temporary staffing/contract labor agencies. The result is that hospitals expect contract labor costs – both rates and hours – to be higher than at any point in the pandemic.

XFERALL can help.

November 1, 2021 (AUSTIN, Texas) – XFERALL, the nation’s leading health care technology platform for hospitals, community mental health agencies, mobile crisis teams, and law enforcement to accelerate the inter-facility transfer of behavioral health and seriously ill and injured patients, experienced significant multi-state growth in 2021. In 2021, XFERALL expanded to partner with sending and receiving facilities in Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Arizona, Virginia, Colorado, Tennessee, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.