Orange County is set to get its first emergency medical centers dedicated to treating people who suffer sudden psychiatric episodes, addressing a void that critics say long has burdened local hospitals and left mentally ill patients with inadequate treatment.
County supervisors voted Tuesday to accept a nearly $3.1 million competitive state grant that will help pay for building renovations and program start-up costs for the expanded care at two undetermined locations.
Supervisor Andrew Do credited newspaper articles stemming from a 2014 Orange County Register investigation with revealing that the county’s lack of an outpatient emergency mental health care center had resulted in psychiatric patients being sent to hospital emergency rooms, where they sometimes were held for hours, or days, without treatment. That also delayed medical treatment for other patients at those ERs.
Hospital emergency rooms generally are ill-equipped and often lack the proper expertise to treat patients suffering psychiatric episodes, said Dr. Michael Brant-Zawadski, executive medical director of Hoag Neurosciences Institute. Likewise, those same patients often don’t need to be held at inpatient psychiatric facilities, which keep people for multiple days.
The county’s new “crisis stabilization program” will provide a middle-ground treatment method that currently is missing.
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