Two-Thirds Of North Carolina Hospitals Offer Emergency Department Telepsychiatry

By the end of March 2014, 72 of North Carolina’s 109 hospitals offered emergency department telepsychiatry services through the North Carolina Statewide Telepsychiatry Program (NC-STeP), which launched January 1, 2014. By July 2015, the state anticipates that contracts with the remaining 36 hospitals will be finalized. The goal of NC-STeP is to improve access to crisis psychiatric services for individuals who come to emergency departments with acute mental health or addiction disorders. Before NC-STeP launched, less than half of North Carolina’s hospitals with emergency departments had 24/7 access to a psychiatrist.

Although the Medicare . . .