THOT members innovate to meet their communities’ and Texas’ behavioral health needs.
Teaching Hospitals of Texas’ teaching and public hospitals are innovating in different ways and leveraging local partnerships to help meet their communities’ behavioral health needs. While each community’s and hospital’s work to improve access to timely behavioral health care looks different, each of our teaching hospitals shares a commitment to being part of the solution to the complex, multi-faceted challenges of prevention and providing care in the best settings at the right time.
Behavioral Health Care Challenges
- Growing need for care along the entire continuum of care types and settings.
- A shortage of behavioral health providers and inadequate access to appropriate care settings including psychiatric inpatient beds, crisis stabilization, residential treatment, and other services along the continuum of care.
- A shortage of forensic beds needed for mental health competency restoration.
- Downstream consequences of shortages including lengthy emergency department wait times for all patients, increased law enforcement costs, and increased utilization of inpatient resources.
- Fragmented care that may not adequately meet patients’ behavioral health needs.
THOT members in action
Improving Care While Reducing ER Use and Arrests for Individuals Experiencing Mental Health Crises
Parkland Health, Dallas Fire-Rescue, and Dallas Police Department respond to mental health crisis calls together with RIGHT Care.
RIGHT Care stands for Rapid Integrated Group Health Care Team and brings together a Parkland psychiatric social worker, a Dallas Police Department officer, and a paramedic from Dallas Fire-Rescue to respond to mental health crisis calls as a coordinated unit, providing on-the-scene intervention and resources to those experiencing mental health distress.
Partnering to Transform Behavioral Health Care and Access in the Permian Basin
Midland Health & Medical Center Health System partner with the community and Legislature to build a new dedicated behavioral health hospital.
To address their region’s pressing and increasing behavioral health care needs, the hospital districts partnered to build and co-manage the new Permian Basin Behavioral Health Center (PBBHC), a 225,000-square foot, state-of-the-art, 200-bed behavioral health hospital.
Partnering With the Local Mental Health Authority to Enhance Medical Education
& Increase Access to Care
UT Tyler and Andrews Behavioral Health work together to address behavioral health needs in East Texas.
To increase care capacity and address the shortage of behavioral health professionals, UT Tyler and Andrews Behavioral Health, the local mental health authority, partner to provide training for UT Tyler’s psychiatry residents and child and adolescent psychiatry fellows in community-based mental health models and practices.
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