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A pilot program in Alabama 911 placing top callers in the system ipad In hopes of rerouting unnecessary calls, connecting desperate people to immediate health advice, and reducing government spending on non-urgent emergency room visits.
As part of the effort, the 50 most frequent 911 callers mobile Areas, some of which have been known to call for emergency transport to the hospital 10 or more times in a single year, will receive tablets for six months that can connect them 24/7 to physicians within the AltaPoint Health system.
Dr. Cindy Gipson, AltaPoint’s director of crisis and justice services, told NBC 15 the program is designed to help callers who may have mental health or poverty-related challenges get the best response from something else. 911 call Requires expensive ambulance transport.
“Sometimes it’s as small as, you know, trying to decide what to eat for dinner or not having anything at all for dinner,” she told station on Tuesday. “And we can send someone out and help them with that, instead of having to use an ambulance to take them to the hospital to get food.”
local authority The hope is the system will save the city money, given that the mobile phone has cost repeat callers, who have been taken to the hospital more than 10 times this year, more than $565,000.
Emergency service providers in the area have complained that unnecessary calls can drain resources of those in need and reduce the overall level of care.
“It’s just repeated abuse escalating,” said Corey Hughes, owner of Medevac Alabama. told WKRG in March. “These are people who have no emergency and use resources heavily. Sometimes multiple times per day.”
He estimates his company has lost more than $1 million from callers who couldn’t pay for their ambulance rides, and the city reimbursed local hospitals last year for less than half the cost of taking repeat callers to the hospital.
The efforts at the hospital system follow a similar initiative at the Mobile Police Department, which last year used a $750,000 federal grant to equip officers with iPads, allowing people in crisis to connect directly with behavioral health providers in Altapointe.
“The overall goal is [the officers] They’re not the first people to respond to a mental health call because it really takes a lot of time,” Gipson. Said Of the efforts at that time. “The paramedics here at the crisis center can respond 24/7. Officers have iPads in their patrol vehicles and all they have to do is hold it up to the person who’s in crisis and we talk through what’s going on.”
Other localities have tried similar programs as a way to prevent people from going into the jail system and reduce demands on officers, who often encounter people needing social services over crime-related 911 calls.
Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston, used a similar program in recent years and found that about 80 percent of the time officers’ ability to deploy telepsychiatry helped deescalate scenarios.
“It has made a tremendous impact on the way we police,” said Sgt. José Gómez, who oversaw the effort, told NBC 15 at the time. “You know, you start talking about changing the police culture, that’s how you do it. You implement these types of strategies to help these individuals.”
Such diversion strategies saw an increase in funding after calls for reform in policing as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, though the Trump administration has cut back. Millions of dollars in community-focused law enforcement grants,