In just three months, the MHMR Authority of Brazos Valley used XFERALL to facilitate rapid transfer of 325 clients with diagnoses such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, and PTSD to inpatient behavioral health treatment.
Using XFERALL has significantly reduced the amount of time the agency’s clients have to wait for admission to a psychiatric facility.
September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Every 11 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies by suicide. It’s the 10th leading cause of death, with 130 Americans dying each day by suicide.
More can be done today to eliminate barriers to timely care and treatment, and XFERALL is proud to be a part of the solution.
Since the Delta variant became dominant earlier this summer, the number of available ICU beds in Texas, the second most populous state in the nation, has dipped below 325 with 12 of the state’s 22 hospital regions having 10 or fewer available ICU beds. The hospital bed capacity for patients with COVID-19 and those with any number of other conditions requiring hospitalization, including traumatic injury, heart attack, stroke, appendicitis, and sepsis, has never been more limited. One Houston-area ER doctor resorted to using Google to identify hospitals potentially able to accept his facility’s transfer patients and then called them – one by one by one by one. He reportedly contacted as many as 60 hospitals in his desperate search for a bed.
The Connected Hospital podcast on the TouchPoint Media network features leaders in health care technology making a difference for hospitals and health systems across the country. Recently, XFERALL’s Shana Palmieri, LCSW, chief clinical officer, outlined how the company’s success and growth is based on the platform’s ability to improve the patient transfer process and identify available bed capacity in area behavioral health facilities.
From Missouri and Arkansas to California and Florida, COVID-19 cases again are increasing. More patients are again requiring hospitalization, and ICUs are filling up. We know the outcomes of this scenario. ED overcrowding, worse patient outcomes and increased mortality, and clinician burnout.
XFERALL can help.
A new federal grant opportunity for states to implement mobile crisis intervention teams is the latest evidence that these teams have an essential role in de-escalation strategies and getting individuals experiencing a behavioral health crisis to the right level of care at the right time.
For mobile crisis teams to maximize the effectiveness of their role, they need resources in the field to identify available care options and to get the individual to that care. That’s where XFERALL fits.
XFERALL’s power is demonstrated in two ways. One is through our mobile transfer platform. In the palm of their hands, clinicians have the ability not only to identify available care resources for a patient needing transfer but also to facilitate the transfer quickly and efficiently.
The second way is through our data tracking and analytics reporting.
Kaiser Health News recently profiled the use of mobile crisis teams in a couple of communities in Montana. The piece highlights the growing trend of such teams being deployed to more effectively respond to psychiatric crises and the likelihood that such teams will only grow in popularity with enhanced Medicaid funding available next year.
The author also notes, however, that even with such teams, “gaps still exist, such as not always having somewhere to take a patient who needs a stable place to recuperate or get more help.”
That gap is exactly where XFERALL can help.
PRESS RELEASE June 2, 2021 (AUSTIN, Texas) – The City of Denton Police Department is partnering with XFERALL, the nation’s leading mobile patient transfer and data analytics platform, to give its Crisis Intervention Response Team (CIRT) the tools to compassionately and effectively respond to people experiencing a behavioral health crisis.
Working with Texas hospitals, local mental health authorities, and mobile crisis teams, XFERALL, a leading mobile application and web-based patient transfer platform reduced patient wait times for inpatient behavioral health care to under 2 hours – 75 percent faster than the national average, which is conservatively estimated at more than 8 hours.
As we celebrate Nurses Week this year (May 6-12), attention is rightly focused on their sacrifices made during the COVID-19 pandemic over the last more than 14 months. Today, with vaccinations increasing and hospitalizations decreasing, we hopefully are turning the corner on this devastating period. For nurses working in hospitals’ busy emergency departments, however, the respite could very well be short-lived as the deep and lingering impacts of COVID-19 on behavioral health become more evident.
COVID-19’s devastating effects reach far into our lives, and community leaders are recognizing the pandemic’s impact on mental health.
Libby Moore, chief clinical officer for Texas Panhandle Centers, highlights the coordination that can take place to align stakeholders and improve care for patients through the XFERALL platform.
As people lost their jobs and incomes, lost loved ones, experienced isolation, and dealt with the lingering pandemic and uncertainty, mental health suffered. As a result, collaboration and coordination are needed more than ever to ensure individuals have access to available services. Even before COVID-19, XFERALL and its clients recognized the opportunity to improve coordination and collaboration across multiple entities where patients too often experience crisis and languish in hospital emergency departments. Many times, hospital personnel call behavioral health hospitals one-by-one searching for an available psychiatric bed.
As illustrated by Libby Moore, chief clinical officer for Texas Panhandle Centers, located in Amarillo, Texas, coordination among stakeholders can result in better outcomes for patients experiencing a behavioral health crisis.
Read the Opinion piece she authored for the Amarillo Globe News here.
As we celebrate Nurses Week this year (May 6-12), attention is rightly focused on their sacrifices made during the COVID-19 pandemic over the last more than 14 months. Today, with vaccinations increasing and hospitalizations decreasing, we hopefully are turning the corner on this devastating period. For nurses working in hospitals’ busy emergency departments, however, the respite could very well be short-lived as the deep and lingering impacts of COVID-19 on behavioral health become more evident.
Children and adolescents seeking mental health treatment in an acute hospital emergency department are waiting longer for care, according to an April 2021 study in Pediatrics. Over the course of the decade between 2005 and 2015, the number of children’s ED mental health visits lasting more than 6 hours increased from 16.3 percent to 24.6 percent.
Getting outpatient mental health treatment with seven days of leaving a psychiatric hospital significantly reduces children’s and adolescents’ risk of suicide, according to a study published in the JAMA Network last summer. It’s long been known that the period immediately after a psychiatric inpatient stay is associated with a high risk of suicide and suicide attempts for children and adults, and that risk stays elevated for months, if not years. But, this study is among the first documenting that timely outpatient, follow-up care actually decreases that risk.
Partnering law enforcement with behavioral health crisis teams is a growing trend. A recent story in The Coloradoan profiles Fort Collins’ approach over the last couple of years to pairing behavioral health co-responders with the town’s police officers. The co-responders are licensed therapists. Together, the police and therapists respond to 911 calls involving people in a mental health or substance abuse crisis.
The need for such partnerships is significant. For people experiencing a psychiatric crisis, jail is not a therapeutic environment, nor is an acute hospital emergency department where these individuals are often held for hours, if not days.
