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Behavioral Health Care Use After Initiation of Emergency Dispatches During Veterans Crisis Line Contacts.

Britton PC, Bohnert KM, Denneson LM, Ganoczy D, Ilgen MA. Behavioral Health Care Use After Initiation of Emergency Dispatches During Veterans Crisis Line Contacts. Psychiatric services (Washington, D.C.). 2025 May 1; 76(5):502-505, DOI: 10.1176/appi.ps.20240352.

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Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: The authors estimated associations between emergency dispatches initiated by Veterans Crisis Line (VCL) responders and use of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) behavioral health care in the following month. METHODS: The sample included 217,541 veterans with VCL contacts between 2017 and 2019 who could be linked with medical records. Models were weighted by a propensity score and stratified by VA behavioral health care use in the year preceding contact. RESULTS: Of veterans with emergency dispatches, 85.9% (weighted) with and 62.2% without prior use of VA behavioral health care accessed care in the month after dispatch. Dispatch receipt was associated with higher odds of psychiatric hospitalization for veterans with and those without prior VA behavioral health care use and of in-person outpatient behavioral health care use for veterans with prior use. CONCLUSIONS: Efforts to link dispatch recipients who had not previously used VA behavioral health care to VA care are needed.




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