Pilot project aims to treat Montreal mental health patients at home, not the ER
Quebec is hoping to expand on a new model of care for patients in the emergency room experiencing a mental health crisis.
The model has been in place at Notre-Dame Hospital in Montreal for several months, and on Monday, Health and Social Services Minister Lionel Carmant announced a plan to expand the measures to other hospitals.
A "brief intervention team" will now care for patients in crisis who need to be stabilized.
The measure, said Carmant, will free up beds for more severe psychiatric cases.
"They can have 48 to 72 hours in a unit of intensive short intervention, so you can avoid hospitalization," he said.
The goal is to make hospitalization a last resort.
All patients leaving the hospital receive follow-up care in the community to ensure no one falls through the cracks.
Those who need it can have access to a measure called "psychiatric home hospitalization," where the patient will be visited at their home by a nurse, a psychiatrist, or social worker up to three times a day for six to eight weeks.
"It can prevent long hospitalization and can help the team as well observe what's happening at the house of the patients. And it leads to a better interaction between family and the treating team," explained Carmant.
Quebec Social Services Minister Lionel Carmant (Christinne Muschi / The Canadian Press)
The pilot project started at in January, and Notre-Dame Hospital said about 90 per cent of those receiving home care did not return to the ER.
The care people receive is also more targeted, explained Dr. Cedric Andres, chief of psychiatry at the Notre-Dame Hospital.
"We are treating the right patient at the right moment, at the right place. This is the difference. So the quality of the care is vastly increased," he said.
Advocates in Quebec have often criticized a lack of mental health resources and long wait times.
Notre-Dame recruited about 10 employees for its brief intervention team and another 40 for its home hospitalization team.
Notre-Dame Hospital in Montreal (CTV News)
Carmant said he's optimistic other hospitals will be able to do the same.
"Well, those are innovative initiatives which lead to recruitment. People are excited about these new programs. And the team here did an unbelievable team and unbelievable work and being able to recruit, without decreasing services elsewhere," he said.
Carmant said he hopes to eventually expand programs like these to hospitals throughout the province.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Liberal MP says she's leaving politics over disrespectful dialogue, threats, misogyny
Liberal MP Pam Damoff says she won't run again in the next federal election, saying she has experienced misogyny, disrespectful dialogue in politics and threats to her life.
Concerns about Plexiglass prompt inspections at some Loblaws locations in Ottawa
Inspections are underway at more than one Loblaws location in Ottawa after complaints were filed about tall Plexiglass barriers.
Federal employees will be required to spend 3 days a week in the office
Starting in September, public servants in the core public administration will be required to work in the office a minimum of three days a week. The Treasury Board Secretariat says executives will need to be in the office four days per week.
OPP officer said 'someone's going to get hurt' before wrong-way Hwy. 401 crash
As multiple Durham police cruisers were chasing a robbery suspect on the wrong side of Highway 401 Monday night, an Ontario Provincial Police officer shared his concerns, telling a dispatcher, "Someone's going to get hurt."
Ont. woman who faked pregnancy to defraud doulas arrested again on similar charges
Victims of a Brantford, Ont., woman who was sentenced to house arrest earlier this year for defrauding and deceiving doulas say they’re not surprised she’s been apprehended again on similar charges.
Five human skeletons, missing hands and feet, found outside house of Nazi leader Hermann Göring
Archeologists have unearthed the skeletons of five people, missing their hands and feet, at a former Nazi military base in Poland.
Poilievre returns to House unrepentant for calling Trudeau 'wacko,' Speaker not resigning
An unrepentant Pierre Poilievre returned to the House of Commons on Wednesday to pepper the prime minister about his drug decriminalization policies after being booted the day prior for refusing to take back calling Justin Trudeau 'wacko' over his approach to the issue.
Construction begins on LGBTQ2S+ national monument in Ottawa
Shovels have hit the ground for constuction on Canada's LGBTQ2S+ national monument in Ottawa.
B.C. man awarded $5,000 in damages in first-of-it-kind intimate image case
In a first-of-its-kind case, a B.C. tribunal has ruled on a dispute involving the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, awarding damages and issuing orders that the photos be destroyed and taken offline.