Amistad, a non-profit corporation that provides peer support to individuals with serious life challenges in Portland, Maine, has launched a new program to provide alternative solutions for those who frequently use the emergency department for psychiatric crisis.
Amistad Executive Director Peter Driscoll and Program Coordinator Christopher Monahan presented the new Peer Coaching Initiative, which launched in November 2011, at the 2012 Maine Quality Counts conference in Augusta, Maine, on Wednesday.
According to Driscoll, Amistad started out as a peer social club, a safe place that people could come to, and has expanded into a full peer center with trained peers placed in the emergency rooms of both Maine Medical Center and Riverview Psychiatric Center.
“A peer is someone that people can feel comfortable with – they’ve been hired by Amistad and have personal experience with mental illness and recovery. They are not counselors or caseworkers, but they provide support to people alongside these other services,” said Driscoll. “We have a peer placed in the emergency rooms seven nights a week from 5 to 11 p.m., the busiest times for those coming in with a psychiatric crisis. We can make the visit more comfortable and provide someone to talk to that’s been there or just help them pass the time in the waiting room, which can sometimes be really scary. They’ll also help the individuals once released from the emergency room by sharing resources.”
Monahan said the Peer Coaching Initiative, which is funded by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, encourages those who tend to end up in the emergency department frequently to meet with trained peers in a community setting, like a coffee shop, on a regular basis to expand their options and help lessen their dependence on the emergency room.
“An average emergency room visit costs $875-1,700, whereas a peer intervention costs $19. More than half of those visiting the emergency room for a psychiatric crisis go home that night, which means they probably didn’t need to be there in the first place,” said Driscoll. "One person in our program has visited the emergency department 1,100 times in seven years. It’s a small number of people using an enormous amount of resources. The hospitals identify their frequent users and we connect with them to talk.”
Monahan said the first seven participants in the Peer Coaching Initiative had an average of 17 emergency room visits in three months prior to the program. After the first three months of involvement with the program, those same individuals averaged nine visits.
“By providing support in non-traditional settings, we think we can really decrease ED use and improve a person’s ability to manage their own health,” said Monahan.
“We just thought there has to be a better way to care for these people and is also much cheaper,” said Driscoll.
To learn more about Amistad and the Peer Coaching Initiative, visit www.amistadinc.org.
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