THE HARRIS CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND IDD
capabilities of Verizon and Lifesize to facilitate it . “ When we first set out to start CORE it was a concept at best . We had questions about connectivity , about whether the tablets would work , whether we ’ d be able to see people at night or if we would be able to hear people next to busy roads .” Young explains .
“ We wanted to build on our learnings , so in those early phases we would literally reach out to Verizon and say , ‘ we had a call in this area and the signal wasn ' t very strong , how do we boost that , and can you help ?’ They were always responsive . The interface needed to be simple for an officer to use out on the road , and we needed to be able to do a crisis assessment in the middle of a shopping center for instance . It can ’ t be complicated .”
“ Our partners were willing to come alongside us when the concept of a real time mental health crisis response in partnership with law enforcement was unproven and unconventional . They ' ve been tremendous – collaborative , responsive , and scalable .”
Young explains the medium of telehealth is well suited to behavioral health care . “ It requires significantly less physical evaluations than other forms of healthcare . Talk and interactions are critical and the assessment process relies more on communication than traditional physical assessments . Our usage of telehealth as a platform for service delivery has gone up exponentially since the pandemic began . We operate a lot of community-facing emergency crisis services that still have to be in-person , but we pivoted a large number of people to work remotely very quickly .
“ We ’ ve developed some best practices around how to do this well , because we want to keep a close eye on people who are not receiving home visits any more
120 April 2021