Innovative crisis care systems are reshaping how we approach mental health emergencies. Kevin Curtis, administrator at the Huntsman Mental Health Crisis Care Center, joins the Self Careapist Podcast to reveal how questioning outdated systems creates pathways to transformative care.

Removing the Wallet Biopsy: Access Without Barriers

Traditional crisis centers begin with what Kevin calls the “wallet biopsy,” determining care eligibility based on insurance status before addressing clinical need. Innovative crisis care systems flip this model entirely.

Kevin’s facility operates on a radical premise: people can walk through the door and receive care regardless of their ability to pay. This wasn’t always possible. The center started as a fully government-funded facility, collected outcome data, and discovered something striking. Over 30% of people seeking help carried commercial insurance that simply wasn’t being utilized.

Armed with evidence showing better outcomes than emergency rooms at lower costs with reduced inpatient admissions, Kevin approached commercial insurers directly. The pitch was simple: cover this care because it saves you money while serving your members better. Surprisingly, insurers agreed.

By combining Medicaid coverage, commercial insurance partnerships, and state legislative funding, the center eliminated financial barriers to crisis care. No wallet biopsy needed.

Beyond Symptoms: Understanding Crisis Drivers

Emergency rooms operate on a triage model: what’s the symptom, how severe is it, is it severe enough? This binary approach misses the complexity of mental health crisis.

Innovative crisis care systems ask different questions. What’s driving this crisis? Are those drivers resolvable?

Kevin shares a powerful example. A person arrives reporting suicidal ideation. The standard response might focus solely on safety planning and inpatient admission consideration. But when staff ask about crisis drivers, the person reveals an untreated toothache causing unbearable pain.

The facility has an integrated onsite dental clinic. Connecting the person to dental care the next day completely shifts their perspective on their situation. The suicidal ideation, driven by unrelenting physical pain and hopelessness about relief, resolves when a pathway to treatment appears.

This is the power of addressing root causes rather than just managing symptoms.

Unexpected Partnerships: Legal Services and Mental Health

One of the most surprising innovations involves legal support. The center partnered with the University of Utah College of Law to create an integrated legal clinic within the crisis facility.

Legal issues emerge constantly as crisis drivers. Eviction notices trigger hopelessness. Denied social security applications leave people without resources. Criminal records block access to housing or employment, creating cascading mental health consequences.

When crisis workers can immediately connect someone with law students supervised by experienced attorneys, barriers begin dissolving. Name changes for individuals navigating gender identity, debt relief consultations, expungement processes: these legal interventions directly impact mental health stability.

The partnership started pragmatically. Many people seeking care qualified for Medicaid or disability benefits but had been denied. Legal advocacy could help them access funding they deserved, which helped the facility’s sustainability. But the collaboration revealed something deeper: social determinants of health nearly always intersect with legal systems.

Kevin describes it as stumbling upon a “one plus one equals five” scenario. The benefits multiply beyond what either system could achieve alone.

The Peer Support Advantage: Unlocking Hope

Innovative crisis care systems integrate certified peer support specialists throughout care pathways. Peers bring a unique superpower: lived experience.

Kevin describes peers as holding a specific type of key that unlocks progress no clinician can access. A psychiatrist can spend twenty minutes explaining medication benefits. A peer can say, “I was terrified to try that medication too. Here’s what actually happened for me.”

The impact is visceral. Guests completing care sometimes express amazement: “You received treatment here a year ago and now you work here? How?”

That realization, that tangible proof of recovery and purpose, plants seeds of hope that clinical interventions alone cannot cultivate. Peers don’t just provide support. They embody possibility.

The facility employs peer support specialists across programs, including substance use specialty peers through partnerships with community organizations when institutional hiring barriers emerge.

Flexible Care Continuum: Hours to Weeks

Unlike emergency rooms that funnel people toward binary outcomes (admit to inpatient or discharge), innovative crisis care systems offer a flexible continuum.

The Huntsman facility operates as a 23-hour stabilization unit, but care duration adapts to individual need. Some people receive crisis counseling and medication initiation, then return home within hours feeling stabilized with a solid follow-up plan.

Others need extended observation. Someone presenting with psychosis while using stimulants benefits from time: antipsychotic medication administration while substances metabolize. After 23 hours, the clinical picture clarifies. Is this drug-induced psychosis requiring community residential treatment, or persistent psychosis needing inpatient psychiatric care?

The same building houses outpatient programs (intensive outpatient, partial hospitalization, general outpatient) and an inpatient unit. People access the level of care they need without navigating fragmented systems.

Post-Discharge Support: Owning the Transition

The highest-risk period for backsliding occurs immediately after crisis stabilization. Systems traditionally discharge people with referral information and hope for the best.

Kevin’s team implements post-discharge follow-up calls. How did that referral work out? Did you make the connection? What barriers emerged?

They’re developing a rolling admissions group support program. If someone needs to wait three weeks for an appointment with a community mental health provider, they can attend weekly check-in groups at the crisis center during that gap.

This approach acknowledges reality: expecting someone experiencing acute mental health crisis to independently navigate complex systems and wait weeks without support sets them up for failure. Innovative crisis care systems own the transitions instead of abandoning people in the gap.

The CAMS Framework: Treating Suicidal Ideation

Most clinicians receive minimal training in suicide risk assessment and virtually none in treating suicidal ideation as a modifiable symptom. The Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS) framework changes this.

CAMS integrates assessment and intervention, examining thoughts, drivers, means, and resolvable factors. It uses number-based ranking systems to establish baseline ideation and intent levels, then tracks whether symptoms increase or decrease through treatment.

Kevin values how CAMS nearly completes treatment planning automatically. When exploring suicide drivers, people identify relationship conflicts, employment stress, or other therapy-appropriate issues. Addressing those concerns directly reduces suicide risk.

The framework works with any therapeutic modality: CBT, DBT, or other approaches. It provides structure while honoring individual clinician artistry.

Challenging the System: The Inner Stinker Pants

Kevin offers unexpected advice for preventing therapist burnout: feed your inner rebellious teenager.

Look at constraints as challenges rather than facts. When insurance dictates how you provide care, push back. Question whether systems must operate the way they currently do.

He references the book “4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals,” which reminds us we have limited time on earth. Why spend it beating your head against dysfunctional systems?

Creative expression comes from refusing to accept that things must work a certain way. Step back and dream: what if this worked differently? What would it take?

That questioning mindset opens doors to legislative partnerships, community collaborations, and system redesigns. The greatest engagement comes from solving problems people claim are unsolvable.

Partnerships Over Competition: Expanding Impact

The facility created business associate agreements with competitors and major community mental health agencies. When someone with insurance the crisis center doesn’t accept needs inpatient care, embedded care navigators from partnering organizations facilitate seamless transitions.

This eliminates the typical scenario where social workers know what clients need but can’t access it because they’re calling external systems that prioritize their own clients first.

Silos protect organizations but create gaps where patients fall through. When you make others an extension of you and become an extension of them, those gaps close.

Kevin acknowledges silos feel safe, but nobody enters this field to protect organizational territory. We enter to care for people who need care.

Training the Next Generation

Innovative crisis care systems invest heavily in training across disciplines. The facility hosts nursing students, social work practicum placements, medical students, and residents from multiple specialties.

They created a bachelor’s level certified crisis worker certification in Utah, bridging the gap between bachelor’s degrees and master’s clinical roles. This creates career ladders and solves workforce challenges while giving less experienced clinicians incremental skill-building under supervision.

Training creates access and builds workforce. It also grounds future professionals in real-world contexts. Law students learning to support clients with untreated mental illness, medical residents understanding crisis drivers beyond symptoms: these experiences shape more responsive future practitioners.

The Invitation: Question Everything

Kevin’s work demonstrates what becomes possible when we refuse to accept that systems must function as they always have. Innovative crisis care systems emerge from curiosity, partnership, and willingness to challenge assumptions.

For mental health professionals navigating therapist burnout, this approach offers a pathway: use your limited time to change systems that don’t serve the people they claim to serve. Force them to become what they say they are.

For those designing services, the lesson is clear: remove barriers, address root causes, own transitions, and build partnerships that multiply impact.

Crisis care doesn’t have to mean triage and binary decisions. It can mean understanding, resolving, and connecting. It can mean hope.

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Resources Mentioned

• CAMS (Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality) framework
• “4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals”
• Utah certified crisis worker certification

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