Letter to the Editor regarding “Severe mental illness and emergency department service use nationally in the Veterans Health Administration”

I read your article Severe Mental Illness and Emergency Department Service Use Nationally in the Veterans Health Administration [1] with interest and would like to add insight from VHA Emergency Medicine Community. Nationally, access to mental health care service for non-Veterans of moderate means is severely limited [2]. Not unexpectedly this limit drives care to Emergency Departments and the limited mental health infrastructure outside of VHA results in long ED stays [3]. However, the referenced NEHI publication excludes federal health systems and extrapolation of these finding to VA may not be valid [4].

Source: General Hospital Psychiatry - January 25, 2017 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Curt Dill, Arnaldo Gonzalez-Aviles Source Type: research