Who Will Build Behavioral Health Urgent Care Well?

Someone asked me recently which topic in healthcare I think deserves far more attention than it gets.

I didn’t have to think long.

Urgent care for behavioral health.

Here’s how I got there.

For years, I’ve watched people in a mental health crisis end up in the emergency room: the wrong setting, at the wrong cost, often with the wrong outcome.

I’ve also spent a lot of time in urgent care. Whatever its challenges, urgent care figured out something important: how to see people quickly, without an appointment, at a lower cost than the ER.

Put those two together and the gap is obvious.

So why doesn’t it really exist yet? Because it’s harder than it looks.

One company tried to build a behavioral health urgent care model on its own, and it folded. Staffing is difficult. Reimbursement is complicated. Safety, and the handoff to ongoing care, have to be right.

But a few organizations are starting to play in this space.

And the need isn’t going away.

I won’t pretend I can lay out the full model in a LinkedIn post.

But I think the question has shifted from "Should this exist?" to "Who builds it well, and what does it take?"

If you’re working on this, or you’ve tried, I’d genuinely like to hear from you. And for everyone else, a quick poll: Will behavioral health urgent care be mainstream within 5 years?

Originally published on LinkedIn.