First Webinar Series: Improving Care for Behavioral Healthcare Clients Seen in Emergency Rooms and Acute Care Settings

The Institute for Behavioral Health Care (IBHI) launched a free three-part Webinar Series focusing on care of behavioral healthcare clients in Hospital Emergency Departments on and Acute Care settings on January 12, January 23 and February 9, 2011.  Drawn from the curriculum and experience of IBHI’s first collaborative, this series shares learning and engages others in new approaches and designs to make care more effective.   ED’s are the “Canaries in the mines” of our strained health care system, and persons suffering behavioral illness, can stress even well planned approaches.  Below are summaries of these webinars and a link to PowerPoint slides and articles. 

January 12, 2011

Lessons Learned from Improving Emergency Care – Larry Phillips DCSW, Program Manager, SSM Oklahoma City, OK& Stuart Buttlaire, , PhD, MBA, Regional Director of Inpatient Psychiatry & Continuing Care, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Northern California, Oakland, CA  – Shared learning from the results of IBHI’s initial learning collaborative on Improving Care for Behavioral Health Clients in Emergency Departments.  The collaborative was stimulated by concern raised by hospital EDs and is the first of several initiatives involving acute care by IBHI. The presentation reviews flow, triage and assessment and other approaches that improve overall flow in the ED as well as improve safety, staff morale and effectiveness.  The work also improved relationship with key external stakeholders especially law enforcement.  One hundred and twenty-eight professionals registered for the Webinar.

Below are reference materials from this webinar:

Performance Improvement: Improving Processes to Reduce LOS for Behavioral Health Patients in the ED: St. Anthony Hospital, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 4/2010

St Anthony Hospital – Improving Flow and Reducing Agitation in Your ED Conference: National Update on Behavioral Emergencies

Improving Care for Behavioral Health Clients Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments: Stuart Buttlaire, PhD & MBA

January 26, 2011

Reducing Suicide Rates to Zero by Practicing Perfection – M. Justin Coffey, MD, Chief ECT Service & Physician Champion, Perfect Depression Care in Chronic Disease, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI

While health care workers may not be able to predict which of their patients will attempt suicide, this model describes how preventive strategies can be implemented that markedly lower the risk of such tragedies.  The Perfect Depression Care program of the Behavioral Health Services (BHS) division of the Henry Ford Health System pursued two key approaches at once:

  • carefully assessing patients for risk of suicide and;  
  • adopting measures to reduce the likelihood that a patient would attempt suicide.   

They succeeded in substantially bringing down the rate of suicide in a population of about 200,000 members of a large health maintenance organization (HMO). Through the second quarter of 2009, the Perfect Depression Care program resulted in 9 consecutive quarters without any suicides.  The work has received the Joint Commission’s Earnest Amory Codman Award and the Gold Achievement Award from the American Psychiatric Association.  Listen in and learn how the model could be adapted to your setting. 

Below is a reference presentation from this webinar:

Perfect Depression Care

February 9, 2011

Lessening Agitation and Confrontation in the ED and Acute Care: Practicing Fundamentals of non-Coercion – Jon Berlin MD, Assistant Clinical Professor, Psychiatry, Medical College of WI; and faculty to the IBHI Collaborative.

Dr. Berlin’s lectures, support and consultation to Collaborative participants proved more than helpful, and were widely regarded as providing key skills and replicable methods to avoid injury to staff and patients and reduce the overall time patients spend in the Emergency Department.

Bio. Since 1997, Jon Berlin, MD has guided Milwaukee County’s Crisis Service, as Medical Director. Over the past 14 years, he has been involved in several large-scale projects. They include being instrumental in solving the 2001-2008 crisis of boarding of psychiatric patients; founding the Disaster Mental Health Task Force of Milwaukee. He was faculty for the BHI Collaborative on improving Care in the ED for Behavioral Health Care clients. Dr. Berlin is a past president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry and co-author/co-editor of Emergency Psychiatry: Principles and Practice.

Below is a reference presentation from this webinar:

Agitation and De-escalation: 5 Fundamentals of Non-coercion by Jon S. Berlin, MD