Becky Dvorak, MSN, RN, regional vice president of behavioral health at St. Louis-based SSM Health, told Becker’s how the system is breaking the cycle of emergency department behavioral health boarding by connecting with community partners, networking groups and other health systems.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: Could you talk about the community aspect of reducing behavioral health boarding?
Becky Dvorak: It lies in St. Louis’ partnership between all the different providers. BJC, Mercy, our community mental health centers — we’re all very connected with each other, which is not typical in most places that I’ve been. Most of the time, you feel like you’re competing for patients. It’s like you don’t want to share your secret sauce about anything; but here in St. Louis, it’s just not that way.
I have a lot of connections with BJC Healthcare, who serve a very similar population of patients that we serve, and Mercy, which enables me to ask questions like, “How are you decanting your ED as quickly as possible to get patients to the right level of care?” Now, there may be other states where those conversations are taking place, and I’m just not aware of it, but in my experience, those in-depth conversations are rare.
The behavioral health network here in St. Louis brings together a lot of different folks. They host monthly meetings, and it brings together all the community mental health partners. We ask ourselves, “What are the needs in this area?” At the end of the day, we’re all taking care of the same patients.
That’s where the region and patients that we serve here benefit, plus a lot of partnerships develop from that. They come in and partner with us at St. Louis University for our urgent care, and then BJC partners with us for our urgent care at DePaul. That’s not always typical. They’re usually pretty siloed.
Q: What else is important to understand about the community’s role in reducing behavioral health boarding?
BD: It’s a team effort. It really connects us all. To be able to pick up the phone if we’re struggling with something is great for me as the new person in St. Louis, not yet aware of all the resources available. Another thing I really appreciate is that if we’re struggling with something, we can bring it to that BHN meeting, talk about it as a group, and ask, “Hey, do you have something that we could use at our Winesville Hospital? Do you have something in that location that could help us that’s unique to here?” When they created the BHN group, it was really innovative to serve the patients of the region.
