Dive Brief:
- A new study from the North Carolina Center for Public Research has concluded that the implementation of a telepsychiatry system across several hospitals' emergency departments in North Carolina has succeeded in offering mental health patients more timely treatment, according to a report from NPR's Shots.
- According to Shots there is a significant shortage of psychiatrists in North Carolina, with 28 counties lacking a psychiatrist entirely, 18 counties having only one psychiatrist, and 70 counties without a child psychiatrist.
- When the Albemarle Hospital Foundation partnered with psychiatrists at Coastal Carolina Neuropsychiatric Center, covering 18 hospitals across 29 counties to create a telepsychiatry program, the results were positive. For example, the length of time to patients waited to be discharged from EDs to inpatient treatment fell from 48 hours to 22.5 hours.
Dive Insight:
The benefits of the program were extensive. The study also found that the percentage of patients who had to returned to Albemarle Hospital within 30 days fell from 20% to 8%, the number of involuntary commitments to local hospitals or state psychiatric hospitals fell by 33%, and the number of readmissions to psychiatric hospitals for patients with severe and persistent mental illness fell. Now the impetus is on other states with modest populations of psychiatrists to see if they can achieve similar results with telepsychiatry.