Logo

Log In Sign Up |  An official publication of: American College of Emergency Physicians
Navigation
  • Home
  • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
  • Clinical
    • Airway Managment
    • Case Reports
    • Critical Care
    • Guidelines
    • Imaging & Ultrasound
    • Pain & Palliative Care
    • Pediatrics
    • Resuscitation
    • Trauma & Injury
  • Resource Centers
    • mTBI Resource Center
  • Career
    • Practice Management
      • Benchmarking
      • Reimbursement & Coding
      • Care Team
      • Legal
      • Operations
      • Quality & Safety
    • Awards
    • Certification
    • Compensation
    • Early Career
    • Education
    • Leadership
    • Profiles
    • Retirement
    • Work-Life Balance
  • Columns
    • ACEP4U
    • Airway
    • Benchmarking
    • Brief19
    • By the Numbers
    • Coding Wizard
    • EM Cases
    • End of the Rainbow
    • Equity Equation
    • FACEPs in the Crowd
    • Forensic Facts
    • From the College
    • Images in EM
    • Kids Korner
    • Medicolegal Mind
    • Opinion
      • Break Room
      • New Spin
      • Pro-Con
    • Pearls From EM Literature
    • Policy Rx
    • Practice Changers
    • Problem Solvers
    • Residency Spotlight
    • Resident Voice
    • Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine
    • Sound Advice
    • Special OPs
    • Toxicology Q&A
    • WorldTravelERs
  • Resources
    • ACEP.org
    • ACEP Knowledge Quiz
    • Issue Archives
    • CME Now
    • Annual Scientific Assembly
      • ACEP14
      • ACEP15
      • ACEP16
      • ACEP17
      • ACEP18
      • ACEP19
    • Annals of Emergency Medicine
    • JACEP Open
    • Emergency Medicine Foundation
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Medical Editor in Chief
    • Editorial Advisory Board
    • Awards
    • Authors
    • Article Submission
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Subscribe
    • Privacy Policy
    • Copyright Information

ACEP4U: Improving Patient Access to Mental Health Care

By Jeffrey Davis and Jordan Grantham | on October 21, 2019 | 0 Comment
ACEP4U Features
  • Tweet
  • Email
Print-Friendly Version

Nearly one in five American adults struggles with some form of mental illness, and ED visits for children who attempted suicide or had suicidal thoughts are increasing. The current health care system is failing too many of these patients, making it difficult for them to find appropriate care. Emergency departments are often their only option, although many emergency departments aren’t optimized to provide psychiatric care. Patients with mental health concerns often remain in emergency departments for hours, sometimes days, as follow-up transfers or community care options are secured.

You Might Also Like
  • Mental Health Care Across the Age Spectrum
  • ACEP Leadership Addresses Care of Veterans, Addiction, and Mental Health Care
  • Telepsychiatry, Emergency Psychiatric Services Can Reduce Mental Health Patient Boarding
Explore This Issue
ACEP Now: Vol 38 – No 10 – October 2019

ACEP has prioritized these issues, advocating for legislative and regulatory changes that would help reduce barriers to treatment and provide more tools and resources for physicians to help meet their patients’ needs. At the same time, we’ve been developing clinical tools and resources to help emergency physicians manage mental health patients in the emergency department. Like many other public health concerns, patient access to mental health care in the emergency department is a complicated problem that requires multipronged solutions.

Advocating for Change

As ACEP advocates for comprehensive mental health care reform, we have seen many ACEP-supported provisions included in House and Senate legislative efforts to enact mental health care reforms in the past few years, including:

  • Creating an Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use and the National Mental Health and Substance Use Policy Lab
  • Extending the Assisted Outpatient Treatment grants and instituting grants for assertive community treatment
  • Establishing liability protections for health professional volunteers at community health centers
  • Extending suicide prevention programs
  • Reauthorizing grants to help train emergency medical personnel to recognize individuals with mental health issues and how to intervene
  • Encouraging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to improve its National Violent Death Reporting System
  • Expanding the mental health workforce
  • Clarifying HIPAA privacy rules for patients with mental illness and their caregivers
  • Eliminating the Medicaid same-day exclusion
  • Seeking additional information about Medicaid managed care plan provision of services for adults at an institution for mental diseases
  • Studying participation in the Medicaid Emergency Psychiatric Demonstration project
  • Enhancing compliance with mental health and substance use disorder insurance coverage

During the 2019 ACEP Leadership & Advocacy Conference, 500 ACEP members asked their legislators to support H.R. 2519, Improving Mental Health Access from the Emergency Department Act. This important piece of legislation, developed by ACEP, would:

  • Expedite transition to post-emergency care through expanded coordination with regional service providers, assessment, peer navigators, bed availability tracking and management, transfer protocol development, networking infrastructure development, and transportation services;
  • Increase the supply of inpatient psychiatric beds and alternative care settings such as regional emergency psychiatric units; and
  • Expand approaches to providing psychiatric care in the emergency department, including tele-psychiatric support and other remote psychiatric consultations, peak period crisis clinics, or creating dedicated psychiatric emergency service units.
Shutterstock.com

Shutterstock.com

On June 26, the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means unanimously approved a bill, H.R. 3417, Beneficiary Education Tools, Telehealth, and Extenders Reauthorization (BETTER) Act, to provide patient improvements for rural services provided by Medicare. This bill incorporated a provision based on the ACEP-supported Mental Health Telemedicine Expansion Act that would improve treatment of mental health by providing telehealth services to individuals at home.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 | Single Page

Topics: AccessAdvocacyHealth ITMental Health

Related

  • ACEP Member, N.C. State Representative Explains Hierarchy of Advocacy

    May 6, 2025 - 0 Comment
  • Research Returns Spotlight to Physician ED Coverage

    April 30, 2025 - 0 Comment
  • March 2025 News from the College

    March 8, 2025 - 0 Comment

Current Issue

ACEP Now May 03

Read More

No Responses to “ACEP4U: Improving Patient Access to Mental Health Care”

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*
*

Wiley
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Advertise
  • Cookie Preferences
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies. ISSN 2333-2603