Why the new 988 hotline has the potential to transform mental health care

"The federal 988 hotline represents a promising new approach to alleviating the nation's growing mental health crisis, but several key challenges loom that could derail this well-intentioned initiative.

One significant information technology challenge the hotline will face involves how to uniformly store and interpret mental health data (more on that later) but the most immediate roadblock is a lack of awareness.

Though the hotline is scheduled to debut in July, the program, which is federally sanctioned and funded but left up to individual states to implement, was announced with little fanfare, so many people within and outside of the medical community likely are unaware of its existence."

Rich Parker is an internal medicine physician.

He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, "The new 988 hotline has potential to transform mental health care, but challenges loom."

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