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No co-sponsors yet.
History
- Reported and committed to finance
- Referred to mental health and developmental disabilities
- Reported and committed to finance
- Referred to mental health and developmental disabilities
Companion bill
The same bill in the other chamber. A bill becomes law when one version passes both houses and the governor signs it, so either number can carry it.
Establishes peer crisis diversion residences
In Assembly Committee · Mental Health · Sponsor Peter Rivera
Full text
The text isn't available here yet. Check nysenate.gov.
Sponsor's memo
Title of bill
An act to amend the mental hygiene law, in relation to establishing peer crisis diversion homes
Purpose
To create peer crisis diversion homes which would provide short term peer support to individuals in psychiatric crisis who can be served outside of a hospital with the goal of helping them stabilize and re-enter into independent living.
Summary of provisions
Section 1 of the bill adds a new section 31.34 of the mental hygiene law directing the Commission of OMH to establish no less than 6 Peer Crisis diversion homes within one year of enactment, of which 3 shall be in rural areas and 3 in urban areas. The homes are designed to provide short term peer support to individuals in crisis who can be served outside of a hospital with the goal of helping them stabilize and re-enter into independent living. The services would be voluntary and provided by peer support specialists who have previously experienced urgent behavioral health needs and recovered and who have completed training approved by the Commissioner. Similarly, the governing body of such homes would consist of individuals who have previously experienced urgent behavioral health needs and recovered.
Read the full memo (609 words)
Section 2 of the bill provides for an immediate effective date.
Existing law
Since the late 1980's NYS has had the Comprehensive psychiatric emergency programs CPEP (Section 31.27 of the mental hygiene law) which was designed to manage psychiatric crisis and envisioned to include crisis residence services.
Justification
Our nation's psychiatric emergency system is in crisis. Community mental health resources across the nation have become progressively scarcer in the past several decades and people with psychiatric disabilities have increasingly turned towards emergency rooms (ER's) at a great cost to society both fiscally and socially.
Emergency rooms are stretched to the breaking point. There is limited physical space and limited staff and this has resulted in a dramatic increase in wait time in the ER's. A 2008 study in Health Affairs, The Policy Journal of The Health Sphere showed a 4.1% increase per year in ER wait time between 1997 and 2004, with ethnic minorities, women and patients in urban ER's waiting longer than other patients.
The tragic death of Ms. Esmin Green in 2008 at the Kings County Emergency Room in Brooklyn New York is an example of the consequences of such overcrowding.
To support the community integration of people with psychiatric disabilities and solve the problems defined above, experts have consistently called for innovative cost effective community based alternatives to the crisis in our psychiatric emergency response system. Through the use of peer crisis diversion homes, New York State can become a national leader in the delivery of innovative crisis services for people with psychiatric emergencies. These peer-operated homes will be designed to assist people with psychiatric disabilities in diverting from psychiatric distress which would otherwise have lead to a hospitalization. Equipped with a variety of traditional self-help and proactive tools to maintain wellness, clinical staff and trained peer companions will assist residents in
learning self-help tools with the underlying goal of avoiding future emergency room and inpatient hospitalizations.
For several years a not-for profit has run a hospital division program called Rose House for residents of Orange and Ulster Counties which is similar to the peer crisis diversion homes envisioned in this bill. This bill expands upon the Rose House model thus filling a gap in the mental health system and helping individuals break the cycle of often chronic unnecessary, ineffective and expensive hospitalizations.
Legislative history
New Bill.
Fiscal implications
Minimal with savings as expensive ER visits are averted.
Effective date
Immediately.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.