Behavioral Health

Focus Areas

The Center for Healthcare Delivery and Policy is engaged to improve access to care and outcomes in patients with Behavioral Health disorders in Maricopa County. Focus areas include:

• Fire/EMS Response
• ED Boarding
• Tertiary Prevention

The ASU Center for Health Care Delivery and Policy and the Healthcare Transformation Institute have been engaged to work with health systems (members of the Health System Alliance of Arizona including Abrazo, Banner, Honor and Dignity Health Systems; and Valleywise Health) to guide improvements in quality of care and access for patients with behavioral health disorders.

The goal is to work with stakeholders to create sustainable, data-driven solutions to improve care, outcomes and cost. Each health system has been working to achieve these goals independently, but the patients are complex, and the system is fragmented, involving state and local government, city and county agencies, emergency medical services, payors and providers. Lack of aggregated and patient specific data across entities has been identified by providers as a major barrier in the delivery of coordinated high quality care, negatively impacting patient outcomes. Tertiary prevention efforts are difficult to identify and are unreported, leading to a group of frequent utilizers who continue to cycle through the system. ED boarding adversely affects operations.

Building on the crisis response system already in place, preliminary discussions are underway to share data, expand solutions and improve the delivery of care across all entities, including the crisis response system, EMS, criminal justice and police, emergency departments, inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care providers, primary care settings, government agencies, and payors.