Policymakers battle rise in behavioral health patients stuck waiting in emergency departments
Photo | Emily Micucci
Dr. Jeffrey Hopkins stands among bed at the emergency department at Milford Regional Medical Center
One challenge that policymakers face as they look to address the rise in the numbers of behavioral health patients waiting in hospital emergency departments for a bed to become available is that none of the underlying problems have easy solutions, Sen. Julian Cyr said Tuesday.
Cyr, the Senate chair of the Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery Committee, joined a Massachusetts Association of Health Plans policy forum addressing the issue of emergency department boarding. Laura Nasuti of the Health Policy Commission said during the forum that the percentage of behavioral health-related emergency room visits that result in boarding increased throughout the pandemic, reaching 31 percent in September 2020 from an average 27 percent in 2019.
"I think payers and providers and our broader sort of fragmented, dysfunctional health care system are all to blame here and all need to do more, and we're going to be asking to do more," the Truro Democrat said.
Cyr said the pandemic has also layered on workforce challenges.
"You can't sort of conjure up a psych nurse out of thin air," he said. "And, yeah you can cut through some red tape when it comes to authorization and you can really push providers as well and hospitals to do more, but all of this is not sort of an easy fix."
Senate President Karen Spilka has listed behavioral and mental health legislation as among the items on her fall agenda. MAHP's Sarah Chiaramida asked Cyr what provisions that bill might include to address ED boarding.
"We've got to walk and chew gum at the same time," he said. "We're going to continue the sort of urgent interventions, the emergency interventions that we have now with a crisis, but what's really going to get us out of this is longer-term investments."
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