‘A supreme form of advocacy’: When finding a psychiatric bed seems impossible, one state’s patients have a partner
Hallie-Beth Hollister is a master at cold calling. She has to be.
She and a small team of psychiatric bed searchers are responsible for calling hospitals across Massachusetts any time a patient is in need of an inpatient psychiatric bed. At any given moment, 20 to 60 mental health patients are temporarily being cared for in one of the five hospital emergency departments covered by Behavioral Health Network, the Western Massachusetts-based emergency service provider where Hollister works. In complex cases, these searches have taken up to six weeks.
