Assessment of a behavioral health emergency response diversion (BHERD) program

[...]police-based crisis response has contributed to the criminalization of patients with mental health conditions, with mental illness being linked to over two million jail bookings per year [6]. The program is a collaboration between the Baltimore Police Department (BPD), Baltimore City Fire Department (BCFD), and Baltimore Crisis Response, Incorporated (BCRI), and aims to reduce police interactions with patients in crisis by diverting their 911 calls to BCRI's hotline “Here 2 Help,” which is staffed 24 h a day, 7 days a week by behavioral health professionals. Though the need to rule out an organic etiology of mental health complaints is a frequent argument for seeing psychiatric patients in the emergency department, only 6% of behavioral health calls were deemed ineligible due to concomitant medical conditions.