Oklahoma City fire department outlines Mobile Integrated Health teams to divert mental-health and overdose 911 calls

At a meeting of the Community Public Safety Advisory Board, Lori Brown Loftus, program manager for the Mobile Integrated Health Care team in the Oklahoma City Fire Department, described a 27-person program that embeds mental-health clinicians and paramedics inside the city's 911 system to divert appropriate behavioral-health and overdose calls from traditional law-enforcement or ambulance responses.

"Our vision is a safe and thriving city in which every call for assistance leads to a service that best meets that person's unique needs," Loftus said, summarizing the program's goal to give callers alternatives to a standard police or EMS response.

The Mobile Integrated Health (MIH) program operates four teams, Loftus told the board: crisis call diversion (CCD), the crisis response team (CRT), an alternative response team (ART) and a community advocacy program (CAP). CCD staff are embedded in the 911 communication center to assess callers and either stabilize them by phone or dispatch the appropriate MIH team. CRT pairs a mental-health professional with a paramedic for high-risk calls and most often co-responds with Oklahoma City Police Department when there are safety concerns. ART responds to low-acuity, nonviolent calls and to some overdose scenes, and CAP works with high utilizers of 911 to link them to long-term community services.

Loftus described concrete capabilities that differ from a standard police response: MIH paramedics perform on-scene medical evaluations to distinguish medical emergencies from psychiatric crises, operate specially outfitted vans for safe transport to crisis stabilization units, and provide community Suboxone inductions when appropriate. "Our paramedics can do that medical evaluation," she said, explaining that the team can determine whether a person can stay at home with supports or needs higher-level care.

Loftus said the CAP team connects residents to existing community resources for nonmedical home needs—such as a grab bar or ramp—to reduce repeated 911 calls. The CAP program was started by the fire department about five years ago and has been folded into MIH; Loftus said the ART grew out of an overdose response team launched about a year earlier. The MIH team totals 27 staff across its roles, she said.

On data and outcomes, Loftus told board members that the MIH effort is new and that the team has limited time-series data: "Our team has not been doing that for very long, maybe about 2 months," she said when asked whether Suboxone and Narcan education had produced measurable reductions in overdoses or deaths. She added that the state tracks Narcan distribution and that the MIH program can track the subset of people it serves locally.

Loftus reiterated how the public should access the service: MIH is integrated into the city's 911 system and can be requested by calling 911; she also noted 988 as a statewide mental-health resource. "The way people in the public need to know to access mobile integrated health is through 911," she said.

The board approved the minutes from the April 15, 2025 CPSAB meeting by voice vote before the presentation. Later in the meeting the board moved into a closed session to review cases; after the closed session the chair said the committee "offered letters of support" regarding three agenda items (transcript references: "20255130 3," "20 25 5 13 o 4," and "20 25 5 13 5"). The meeting then adjourned.

Loftus and her team emphasized the program's aims—keeping people in the least restrictive environment where safe, reducing law-enforcement response to nonviolent behavioral-health calls, and connecting residents to ongoing treatment and community supports. Board members asked about funding for home modifications and about whether MIH is tracking overdose outcomes; Loftus said CAP links clients to existing community resources for home modifications and that MIH and state programs track Narcan and overdose metrics, but the local program's outcome dataset is only beginning to mature.

The presentation and subsequent questions are likely to shape the board's ongoing review of how the city routes behavioral-health emergencies and how MIH integrates with police, EMS and statewide programs.