By Ken Carlson, The Modesto Bee, November 14, 2019
Paramedic Dennis Flannery is one of eight medics in a Stanislaus County pilot program that is ensuring people in a mental health crisis are taken promptly to the care they need.
“Our goal is to help people in a behavioral health crisis to avoid extensive emergency room stays, if the (mental health) crisis is their only emergency at that time,” Flannery said.
The community paramedicine program — a first in California — was launched in fall 2015 because too many patients in psychiatric crises are delayed in hospital emergency departments. In the past four years, paramedics who received special training assessed 1,473 patients in the field and took 429 of them directly to a mental health crisis center.
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