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Regional CCS committee to revise crisis policy to include guardianship and clarify ambulance protocols
Summary
The committee agreed to update its Policy for Addressing a Crisis to explicitly reference guardianship, clarify when staff may call emergency services, and revise mental-health screening language to include CSSRS questions; a staff review and revised language will return to the committee at a future meeting.
The Regional CCS Coordination Committee discussed a planned revision to its Policy for Addressing a Crisis at its Jan. 13 meeting, including adding explicit language about guardianship and clarifying when emergency medical services should be contacted.
Jan Kupczyk, who called the meeting to order, raised that the draft policy contained no explicit reference to guardians and asked that guardian status be included in the verbiage. Teri Ovaska said the policy will be updated to address guardianship and emphasized that the client’s safety plan should document preferences for emergency response.
Tom Croteau asked who is responsible for calling an ambulance in situations involving clients and noted clients retain the right to refuse ambulance transport. Committee members discussed balancing respect for client preferences with the need to act when a client lacks capacity or becomes medically unresponsive. Teri Ovaska and Julie Winter said CCS can call emergency services if a participant is unresponsive, and that safety plans can specify what clients want done in an emergency.
Shannon Esala requested the screening and assessment language be updated to incorporate the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale (CSSRS) questions for mental-health evaluations and reminded the group that providers are mandated reporters. Pam Stanny sought clarification on the term “imminent crisis”; Teri Ovaska defined it operationally during the discussion as when someone is a danger to themselves or others for mental-health concerns, and as a danger to self and/or health for medical emergencies.
Julie Winter said the Crisis Policy will be revisited and the committee will include copies of the updated safety-plan language and related policies on the next meeting agenda.
Next steps: staff will draft revisions that add guardianship language, clarify ambulance/EMT response and thresholds for action, and update screening language to include CSSRS items; the committee will review the revised policy at a future meeting.
