Establishment and effectiveness of the Behavioural Emergency Response Team – Australia’s first rapid response service for people with disabilities who have complex and challenging behaviours
Michelle Stute1, Jessica Orford1, Alicia Chaplain1 1Metro North Hospital And Health Service, Herston, Queensland, Australia
Abstract
People with disabilities who have complex and challenging behaviours are frequent attenders at emergency departments and have unnecessarily prolonged hospital admissions. They often have unmet health needs and care arrangements that are insufficient for their disabilities, resulting in breakdown of care arrangements and relinquishment to hospitals as the provider of last resort. Once admitted, behaviours often escalate causing injury to staff, property damage, and increasing difficulty assessing and managing the patient.
The Behavioural Emergency Response Team (BERT) was established by Metro North Health in February 2023 as an allied health led multi-disciplinary, rapid response service specialising in management of people with disabilities who have complex and challenging behaviours. The aims of the BERT are to improve health, reduce emergency department presentations and streamline admissions where medically required, for people with disabilities who have complex and challenging behaviours. Effectiveness will be measured by comparing total admitted bed days and emergency department presentations to a matched cohort from 2022, in addition to service response time, outcome on discharge, client/carer satisfaction surveys, and pre and post quality of life measures.
The BERT has been successfully established and is receiving a steady flow of referrals. Key factors contributing to this include strong executive support, funding based on clinical outcomes rather than activity, recruitment of highly specialised staff, and effective collaboration with internal and external stakeholders.
Effectiveness after 6 months of operation, as measured by the metrics described in the methods, will be presented with respect to whether the service has met its aims.
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