revolving door<\/a> that has city dwellers cycling between hospitals, shelters, streets and jail \u2014 without receiving proper treatment.<\/p>\n\u201cWe cannot improve what we do not measure,\u201d Schulman said at a Wednesday oversight hearing.<\/p>\n
The B-HEARD program pairs EMTs with health care workers to handle certain 911 mental health calls. Youtube\/NYC Health + Hospitals<\/p>\n
Schulman wants to drill down on responses from teams like the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division (B\u2011HEARD) \u2014 a program launched by former Mayor Eric Adams in 2021 \u2014 which pairs EMTs with health care workers to handle certain 911 mental health calls.<\/p>\n
Included in those responses would be info such as the time and date of the call, its geographic location, whether a B\u2011HEARD team was dispatched and how it responded, plus the ultimate outcome.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we are serious about building a public health-centered crisis response system, we need clear accessible information about where B-HEARD is working, where it is not and why,\u201d Schulman said.<\/p>\n
An audit by the New York City Comptroller\u2019s Office last year determined Adams\u2019 showcase program was underperforming. Even when B-HEARD teams were eligible to respond to a mental health crisis, they only responded 65% of the time, the report found.<\/p>\n
The cause of the underperformance is difficult to discern given the current amount of B-HEARD data being tracked, the comptroller\u2019s office noted.<\/p>\n
Lynn Schulman sponsored a bill that would require more data tracking of mental health crisis in New York City. She said the information could inform improvements to the city\u2019s mental health assistance programs. Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reasons these calls did not receive services cannot be discerned because the Mayor\u2019s Office of Community Mental Health (OCMH)\u2014which administers the program\u2014does not track this information,\u201d the report said, further suggesting that the yearly data report needed \u201csignificant improvement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laquisha Grant, the deputy executive director of the Mayor\u2019s Office of Community Mental Health, promised B-HEARD reports would be published more frequently under Mamdani during Wednesday\u2019s hearing. <\/p>\n
But Grant deflected calls for more detailed reports, citing \u201csignificant operational and legal issues with the bill\u2019s reporting requirements as written.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe required data points, including precise location, could easily be connected and traced to individuals, especially in residential buildings, exposing the identities of New Yorkers during their most private and sensitive moments,\u201d she said, adding some of the data may be shielded by HIPAA laws.<\/p>\n
An official from the Mamdani administration said the administration agrees with the \u201cspirit\u201d of the bill but pushed back on the level of tracking the new legislation would require. Andrew Schwartz \/ SplashNews.com<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder this administration we are deeply focused on interagency coordination and really figuring out how to be able to bring agencies together to work more cohesively and be able to share information better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilwoman Tiffany Cab\u00e1n, char of the Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse, pushed back, saying other cities \u2014 while pointing to Denver\u2019s START program \u2014 have managed to publish robust crisis response data without violating patient privacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re collecting a lot more data and they\u2019re not violating people\u2019s HIPAA rights,\u201d Cab\u00e1n, a Queens socialist, said about the Mile High City initiative, \u201cand the data that they\u2019re collecting is allowing them to get better, more effective outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to continue to underperform in terms of outcomes if we don\u2019t start getting that data. It\u2019s really, really critical.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City Council members clashed with the Mamdani administration over the limited scope of information released on mental health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,23742,137,59252,50883,514,5005,515,23741,3780,119672],"class_list":{"0":"post-521395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-city-council","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-health-and-human-services","13":"tag-health-department","14":"tag-mental-health","15":"tag-mental-illness","16":"tag-mentalhealth","17":"tag-metro","18":"tag-us-news","19":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}