2023-07-16 14:26:37
(Montreal) The CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal has considerably reduced its waiting times for access to mental health services. Thanks to the ELAN project, people in need receive a response to their request for help within 20 days, on average.
Posted at 10:26
Coralie Laplante The Canadian Press
The ELAN initiative was implemented in 2020, when 2,220 people were on the CIUSSS waiting list for mental health care.
“In 2020, we had a lot of expectations for access to our services, and we wanted to optimize our access counter [en santé mentale]. So, we wanted to review the organization of work and we had the idea of setting up a team that might do the intervention [à] term,” says France Gélinas, assistant director of the Mental Health Programs Department at the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal.
The CIUSSS then asked its stakeholders to set up this team dedicated to short follow-ups.
“We knew that 30% of all the requests we receive […] we can respond to it in two or three interventions, then the person will be able to continue their journey, their recovery,” says Ms. Gélinas.
From now on, 450 people are on the waiting list for the mental health access point of the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île. Patients can expect to receive a call from a professional following a first request following a maximum of 45 days. In 2020, a person in need of mental health support might wait up to 562 days for a response.
Patients continue to send their requests to the mental health access point. They are redirected to a worker from the ELAN team according to the assessment of their situation.
“Initially, this team really had to be temporary,” says Ms. Gélinas. However, the team is still in place today to come to the aid of “regular” window responders when the volume of requests increases.
“Even today, we deploy the ELAN team when we see that there is greater traffic, per period,” says France Gélinas, saying that these workers can be called upon “at any time,” so as to that the population does not experience long waiting times, as in 2020.
The CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal plans to set up a centralized mental health access point in the coming months, to promote “equal access for all CIUSSS service points “, can we read in a press release issued by the institution.
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