Crisis Assistance Team Rerouted More Cases to Mental Health Resources in January
The county’s Crisis Assistance Team says it diverted 18 people from going to jail last month, up from four in December
By Zoë Buhrmaster
The number of times the county’s Crisis Assistance Team (CAT) redirected people from jail to mental health resources spiked over the past month, jumping from four diversions in December to 18 in January. While the team doesn’t have an explanation for the increase, the number is significant, James Pyke, the county’s behavioral health supervisor, said during Flathead County’s monthly Board of Health meeting.
“That big jump in jail diversions for the individual, that leads to a better quality of care and just better progression to get healthy,” Pyke said Thursday. “And for our county, that is quite a significant cost savings for the month.”
The CAT program began in 2020 with the aim of decreasing the frequency and intensity of 911 behavioral health calls by rerouting those in crisis to mental health services. Co-responder crisis therapists are dispatched to calls through 911 or 988, providing assessments alongside law enforcement officials to help de-escalate and reroute certain cases to mental health resources in the community. CAT care coordinators operate as contact points and informational resources for the co-responders and law enforcement.
Since its origin, the team has responded to over 1,000 calls.
Pyke also noted that cases of suicidal ideation increased in January. The data comes from assessments that co-responders and care providers make on-site based on what they identify as “the primary presenting issue,” Pyke said. He added that the county department is awaiting 988 call-center data from responses in February to confirm whether the trend continues or if January is an outlier month.
“We definitely had more mental health calls in January, just in the county, than we did in December,” Pyke said.
Overall, the number of people that the Crisis Assistance Team helped also rose, as a team member on leave over December had come back, returning the department’s staff to normal.
The department’s collection of data for the team is still new, having only started in October of last year, and it is still in the process of fine-tuning it. Don Barnhart, the mayor of Columbia Falls and an appointee to the county board of health, spoke on the new program’s data at Thursday’s meeting.
“We talked about getting this going for a while,” Barnhart said. “Now that it’s hit the ground running, it’s obvious that the need was present.”
Separately, the meeting also addressed reports from the community health department. Hannah Griffin, a community health nurse, said the department’s efforts to use the state’s presumptive Medicaid coverage, which allows pregnant women to sign up for and receive same-day temporary Medicaid coverage for prenatal and pregnancy-related cases, has risen.
In 2024, 69 people in the county applied for pregnancy Medicaid. Twelve people have already enrolled this year.
Despite the program’s long-running availability, previously there had been few users, Griffin said, inspiring the community health department to begin tracking the numbers in October 2023 and making an effort to boost awareness.
“We’re super excited about that program and being able to connect more people with resources when they’re pregnant,” Griffin said.