Hundreds of people in North Carolina each day are waiting inside hospital emergency departments for behavioral health care. One reason is that a real-time list of operational beds isn’t available, which makes it difficult to connect people in emergency departments to care in more appropriate settings. To address the growing behavioral health crisis, the NC Department of Health and Human Services is today launching a new tool to help hospitals and other providers quickly find an open bed where people can get the behavioral health treatment they deserve.
The state of emergency declared nation-wide due to COVID-19 led to the creation of public health policies that aimed to protect citizens from the health contingency. The laws included continuous Medicaid coverage under which beneficiaries were guaranteed uninterrupted coverage, with no need for an annual redetermination on the basis of changes in their household or their income.
