Kaiser Health News (11/22, Szabo) reports on “a transitional care clinic at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, which annually treats up to 1,500 patients with serious mental illness until they can find regular care.” By treating patients with mental illness, the clinic helps them from “winding up in the” emergency department. The article adds, “More than half of emergency room physicians said their local mental health system has gotten worse in the past year, according to a survey of 1,716 members of the American College of Emergency Physicians, released” last month. The survey revealed that 75% of ED physicians “said on their last shift, they saw at least one psychiatric patient who needed to be hospitalized.”
Related Links:
— “Clinics Help Keep People With Serious Mental Illness Out Of ER,”Liz Szabo, Kaiser Health News, November 22, 2016.