2024 15th Annual NUBE Conference

The Huntsman Mental Health Institute (HMHI) of the University of Utah, through active involvement and integrated efforts with our community, have developed an alternative to Emergency Departments for the evaluation, stabilization and treatment of people experiencing acute mental health exacerbations. In this presentation, we will discuss the HMHI Receiving Center, which provides emergency care for individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. It is also serving as a pilot program for the Kem and Carolyn Gardner Mental Health Crisis Care Center (MHCCC), affiliated with HMHI, which will open in March 2025. This presentation serves to introduce the HMHI Receiving Center purpose and to discuss initial findings of this pilot program to serve our community.

The HMHI Receiving Center provides walk-in treatment as well as EMS/Police/Fire drop off for patients to get services and treatment 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Services include short, highly intensive interventions focused on resolving crises in the least restrictive manner possible. Services include crisis evaluation, psychiatric assessment, medication prescribing, peer support, case management, and connection to on=going resources and support, and crisis observation, if needed for up to 23-hours. The HMHI Receiving Center also provides detox initiation for community rehabilitation programs, inpatient medical detox, and HMHI Bridge outpatient medication-assisted treatment program.
Through a collaboration with Salt Lake County and multiple community partners the MHCCC will be a centralized emergency psychiatric center for the county of Salt Lake City, Utah. Taking data and experience from the HMHI Receiving Center we have been able to further develop and trial how to best facilitate the needs of our patients and community partners.

Learning Objectives:

The HMHI Receiving Center is an alternative to psychiatric emergency rooms for the people of Salt Lake County.

Utilizing community partnerships allows for a centralized psychiatric emergency center.

Discussing of initial data from our pilot program to show how this model can alleviate some burden on emergency departments.