$45M Allocated To Support Behavioral Health Crisis Response

BALTIMORE COUNTY, MD — The Greater Baltimore Regional Integrated Crisis System Partnership has announced a funding award of $45 million throughout five years to support behavioral health crisis response infrastructure and services in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Carroll County and Howard County. GBRICS was developed with the collaboration of 17 hospitals, four local behavioral health authorities and behavioral health experts and leaders across these jurisdictions. The goal of the initiative is to expand community-based services that meet the need of a person or family in crisis, rather than calling 911, visiting an emergency room or interacting with police.

“The goal of the GBRICS Partnership is to reduce unnecessary ED use and police interactions for people experiencing behavioral health crises. To achieve this, we must have robust behavioral health services available around the clock in the communities where people live to ensure that people get the care they need at the exact time they need it," Crista M. Taylor, president and CEO of Behavioral Health System Baltimore, said.

People living in these four jurisdictions account for approximately 1.9 million residents and more than 58,000 emergency department visits every year for mental illness and/or substance use disorder. An effective emergency response system includes comprehensive behavioral health crisis response services. Without this component of emergency medical care, people call the police and use emergency medical services and hospitals when experiencing a behavioral health crisis instead.

“Our 23-year old son has been hospitalized for his mental illness more than 20 times during his lifetime,” Gail Claus, Howard County resident and NAMI Howard County volunteer, said. “Frequently he had to be placed in a hospital unit that was not equipped to offer the type of therapeutic behavioral health care that our son needed at the time. Having access to crisis services in the community that’s available 24 hours, seven days a week will be a valuable asset for families like ours.”

During the five years the grant money will be available, GBRICS will:

· Create a 24/7 regional hotline that is supported with technology for real-time capacity and care coordination across the system of care.
· Promote the regional hotline as an alternative to calling 911 or using emergency departments for crisis care.
· Ensure 24 hours a day, seven days a week access to mobile crisis teams, a team of mental health professionals that provide crisis response services to people in their home or other community-based settings.
· Support outpatient providers to offer walk-in/virtual behavioral health services to address immediate needs.
· Establish a GBRICS Council to support accountability and sustainability of the initiative. GBRICS will create one hotline number for the four-jurisdiction region—this will be a number that people can call for help, rather than calling 911 or going to the emergency department. Hotline operators will be able to provide assessments, deescalation and help with scheduling appointments in real-time using technology that shows treatment bed availability and open appointments across the system of care. The regional hotline will also have the ability to deploy MCT, to respond to people experiencing crises in the community and help them safely stabilize and get connected to ongoing care.