NC COVID Pass Through Funding
Grant
Overview
abstract
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Rural North Carolina continues to have a shortage of mental health providers throughout the state. Emerging technologies in video communication and greater bandwidth have enabled telepsychiatry to provide mental health services to increase access to care, especially in remote and underserved areas of the state. Session Law 2018-44, Senate Bill 616 mandates the Contractor will continue to work to onboard hospitals as well as explore opportunities to expand to community-based settings to provide services outside of hospital emergency departments. In 2013, North Carolina invested in providing telepsychiatry services in rural parts of the state by teaming with the Contractor to form the North Carolina Statewide Telepsychiatry Program (NC-STeP). By October 1, 2013, 14 hospital emergency departments (EDs) were fully operational. Since that time, an additional 37 hospitals have enrolled in NC-STeP, totaling 51. Additionally, the number of psychiatric providers participating in the program has grown from 30 to 47. Since program inception, 43,025 telepsychiatry assessments have taken place, and approximately 6,091 involuntary commitments (IVCs) have been overturned. In the first eight years of the project, the Contractor's Telepsychiatry Center enabled the development and expansion of current telepsychiatry services through a combination of engineering, technical assistance, coordinating activities and deploying specialized telemedicine equipment to serve hospitals in NC. Due to this success, the Contractor plans to continue improving the dimensions of mental health care and furthering development of telepsychiatry training and telepsychiatry research programs in Year 9 of this initiative.
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