Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services

Read the full report at Becker’s Behavioral Health

Behavioral health emergency department visits across the U.S. are projected to increase by 1 million over the next decade. In response to rising demand, Philadelphia-based Penn Medicine opened a crisis response center in 2023 at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania-Cedar Avenue and has seen measurable results.

Six months before the center opened, the Cedar Avenue ED was averaging 297 psychiatric consults per month. In the first six months after the crisis response center, or CRC, launched, that figure dropped to 56 per month, a more than 80% decrease. The number of patients who needed to receive psychiatric care in the ED as opposed to being able to receive it in a space built for psychiatric care has stayed at or below 56 per month since, said Katie Dalke, MD, the system’s vice chair for clinical Operations in psychiatry.

When Penn Medicine entered into an agreement to deliver behavioral health services on the campus in March 2021, there was no psychiatric emergency room on site, only a medical ED, a detox unit and two inpatient units. Patients experiencing mental health crises were coming through the medical ED and then being transported by ambulance across the city to Pennsylvania Hospital, which had its own CRC, before potentially being sent back to Cedar Avenue for detox or inpatient care.

“That’s a lot of transitions for people who are in crisis,” Patty Inacker, vice president of behavioral health for Penn Medicine, told Becker’s.

Read the full report at Becker’s Behavioral Health