EmPATH unit

EmPATH unit (Emergency Psychiatric Assessment, Treatment, and Healing) is an acronym for a specialized hospital-based emergency department or outpatient medical observation unit dedicated to mental health emergencies. Unlike standard emergency departments, EmPATH units gather their patients in chairs in a central room called a milieu.^[1][2][3]

EmPATH units were developed as a response to US emergency department overcrowding as large numbers of mental health patients were waiting for hours or days until they could be transferred to an inpatient psychiatric facility.^[4][5]

Moving psychiatric patients to a separate area for specialized emergency care opens emergency department beds for patients with medical emergencies and avoids the more confined structure of a standard emergency department which has been cited as a potential cause of worsening psychiatric patient symptoms.^[6] The open design of the EmPATH unit allows patients to move about freely, helping reduce stress.^[7][8] A study of the EmPATH unit at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics has shown that patients need shorter stays, less inpatient care, and return to hospital less frequently.^[9] Other hospitals' EmPATH units have reported fewer than 25% of psychiatric emergency patients still require inpatient care after an EmPATH stay.^{[10][11][12][13]}

In their "Roadmap to the Ideal Crisis System", The National Council for Mental Wellbeing stated that there should be at least one EmPATH unit in every mental health system.^[14]