Southwest Texas Crisis Collaborative
Program for Intensive Care Coordination (PICC)

The Program for Intensive Care Coordination (PICC) launched July 1, 2019 and is the next phase in the Southwest Texas Crisis Collaborative’s mission to improve the overall behavioral health system in Bexar County. The STCC Steering Committee prioritized an additional layer of outpatient services to offer an intensive team approach to more adequately address the unique needs of a special population. This is the next step in elevating patient care to in the outpatient setting. After reviewing the first full year of data from the Law Enforcement Navigation Program, the Collaborative identified a population of 100 individuals who were emergency detained 6 or more times in one year.

PICC was developed in partnership with San Antonio Fire Department EMS Mobile Integrated Healthcare (SAFD-EMS-MIH), San Antonio Police Department Mental Health Unit (SAPD-MHU), and the Center for Health Care Services (CHCS). This multidisciplinary approach was created in an effort to reduce emergency detentions and the subsequent use of emergency and inpatient services by providing ongoing engagement and wraparound care tailored specifically to each patient’s unique needs. The services may consist of ongoing engagement, case management, medication management, psychosocial rehabilitation, transportation, and connections to other community resources. By forming a team consisting of a Mobile Integrated Healthcare Medic, a specialized Mental Health Officer, and a Qualified Mental Health Professional, various skill sets and resources are available to the patient.

The spirit of this model is to literally “meet the patient where they are at,” both physically and mentally. The team is agile and engages with the individual at each touchpoint of the behavioral health system to include the hospital setting, shelters, boarding homes, jail, and community settings. By providing consistent involvement in the care of the patient, the team is able to create a stable foundation with the individual it is serving, resulting in an overall improvement of patient outcomes.