TeamHealth, a physician-led practice, and Array Behavioral Care, a virtual psychiatry and therapy practice, have partnered in an effort to improve emergency mental health care, the companies shared with MedCity News exclusively.
Knoxville, Tennessee-based TeamHealth’s practice consists of 19,000 affiliated physicians, advanced practice clinicians and operational team members. It has partnerships with over 2,500 acute care hospitals and post-acute facilities to help them staff their departments, with a specialty in emergency medicine. Array Behavioral Care, based in Chicago, partners with hospitals, health systems, community organizations and payers to deliver psychiatry and therapy.
Through the partnership, TeamHealth’s clinicians work in the emergency department of its hospital partners. When a patient comes into the emergency department with behavioral health care needs, TeamHealth will connect the patient with an Array psychiatrist for a virtual evaluation, treatment and disposition recommendation.
“Through our partnership with Array Behavioral Care, we’re integrating specialized virtual psychiatric care with the critical on-site expertise of TeamHealth clinicians in emergency departments,” said Dr. Jody Crane, chief medical officer of TeamHealth, in an email. “This collaboration streamlines behavioral health treatment, alleviates strain on ED resources, and provides exceptional care.”
The partnership comes as mental health-related emergency visits increase among adults and children. And more than half of acute care facilities don’t have dedicated psychiatric resources, including on-site psychiatrists or inpatient psychiatric units.
The collaboration aims to solve these issues, according to Dr. Sara Gotheridge, Array Behavioral Care’s chief medical officer.
“We launched this partnership because EDs nationwide are facing huge surges in demand for mental health care,” Gotheridge said in an email. “Individuals in crisis often wait hours or days in crowded EDs without access to timely, specialized care because this high patient volume slows the entire treatment process. That’s not just a clinical issue; it’s a systemic one that affects outcomes, clinician wellbeing, and hospital efficiency.”
She added that Array Behavioral Care chose to work with TeamHealth because it’s a “proven leader in emergency medicine that has a clear focus on clinical quality and patient-centered care.”
TeamHealth, meanwhile, chose Array Behavioral Care as a partner because it has over 25 years of experience and uses an evidence-based model that incorporates 40 clinical and operational data points, Crane said. Array’s psychiatrists also work as an “extension of our on-site ED team, providing timely consults, thorough evaluations, and clear documentation within existing EHR/CPOE systems. This enhances decision-making, mitigates risk, and improves patient flow,” Crane added.
The companies declined to share the financial details of their relationship.
Together, the companies hope to reduce preventable ED utilization and unnecessary readmissions, as well as connect people to appropriate community or home-based care, according to Gotheridge.
“We have one central goal we want to achieve: ensuring every behavioral health patient in the ED receives the right care, at the right time, in the right dose,” Gotheridge stated. “That means expert evaluation, compassionate crisis stabilization, and clear care pathways that set patients up for long-term success. We also want to support ED clinicians. They are under extraordinary pressure and may struggle to manage their caseloads effectively.”
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