Moving Crisis Care ‘Upstream’: The Family Service League Case Study
1:00 – 2:00 pm ET
Communities across the country are grappling with how to respond more effectively to behavioral health crises, in which individuals are often routed through emergency departments (ED) or handled solely by law enforcement, even when clinical intervention is more appropriate. This leads to unnecessary police involvement in non-criminal behavioral health situations, increased hospital and ED utilization, high system-wide costs, delays in access to appropriate care, and stigma and community mistrust around crisis response.
During this one-hour live presentation, Chief Strategy Officer Jeff Steigman, Psy.D., will discuss how Family Service League (FSL), the largest behavioral health provider in Suffolk County, Long Island, has been at the forefront of designing, piloting, and scaling innovative crisis-intervention models that move care “upstream”—ensuring immediate access to the right professional at the right time, in the right setting.
Dr. Steigman will share how FSL partnered with law enforcement and government agencies to pilot real-time telehealth triage, divert 911 behavioral health calls to licensed clinicians, close persistent gaps in crisis response, and deliver community-based stabilization services that reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and police encounters. FSL’s future priorities include sharing operational outcomes and cost-benefit data with stakeholders, establishing these models as standard practice rather than exceptions, expanding intervention capacity, and developing sustainable, rational funding mechanisms to support long-term implementation.
Executive attendees of this session will learn:
- How to redesign crisis response systems to intervene earlier and build stronger operational partnerships with law enforcement
- How to implement and scale telehealth-enabled crisis triage, including diverting behavioral health calls from 911 to clinical teams
- How to evaluate and document outcomes to show upstream crisis care reduces costs, improves outcomes, and protects community safety
Featured Speakers
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Jeff Steigman, Psy.D., Chief Strategy Officer, Family Service LeagueDr. Steigman, a clinical psychologist with 30 years of behavioral health care experience, has extensive experience in strategic planning, program evaluation, continuous quality improvement, operation of clinical behavioral health care programs, and the use of technology in health care. He was instrumental in developing and implementing the first 24/7/365 crisis stabilization program on Long Island, which opened in March of 2019. This program offers a continuum of crisis services, including stabilization and mobile crisis response. He has developed proof of concept for several innovative practices that have since been expanded, which serve to bridge longstanding gaps in the larger system and afford access to needed behavioral health care services. This includes collaboration with local law enforcement on police reform and connecting patients in medical practices, or those leaving a hospital setting, to mental health and substance abuse services in an automated and streamlined fashion. He maintains a private practice in Port Jefferson, N.Y.
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