[Photo: SC Department of Mental Health]
When emergency room patients are deemed “a danger to themselves or others,” every state requires hospitals to hold them until a psychiatrist conducts a face-to-face evaluation to decide whether it is safe to let them leave. In rural hospitals across the country, it can take days for a psychiatrist to show up and perform the exam.
Five years ago, rural hospitals in South Carolina illustrated the problem. On a typical morning, more than 60 people were waiting in the state’s emergency rooms for psychiatric exams so they could either be discharged or admitted for treatment.
Today the scene is quite different, thanks to a “telepsychiatry” program that allows psychiatrists to examine South Carolina patients through videoconferencing, reducing the average wait time from four days to less than 10 hours. In 2010, North Carolina began rolling out a similar program, and a dozen other states, including Alabama, Kentucky and Wisconsin, plan to follow suit.
Getting Rural Patients Psychiatric Help Fast (South Carolina)
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