Expanding Crisis Mental Health Care Using Telepsychiatry and Integrated Data Systems

Telepsychiatry is South Carolina’s solution to a shortage of mental health professionals in rural emergency departments. The state uses integrated administrative data to facilitate both patient treatment and program evaluation in order to connect more patients to skilled mental health practitioners who are better equipped to diagnose and treat psychiatric illness. The study is an example of how integrated data can be utilized to create a matched control group, a thorough understanding of patients’ lives in order to provide better care, and follow up on service use outcomes. In this case, the IDS was able to demonstrate that telepsychiatry is a viable solution to the problem of psychiatric understaffing in rural areas of South Carolina.