Emergency room physicians at Providence Saint John's Health Center will soon be able to place patients on involuntary psychiatric holds without waiting for a county crisis team to arrive, under a pilot program the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved Tuesday, Aug. 11.

The change targets a bottleneck that has kept LA County's 71 mobile mental health crisis teams tied up inside private hospital ERs for roughly 1,100 hours every month. Many private hospitals, including Providence Saint John's, do not currently have physicians authorized to initiate the holds, known as 5150 evaluations. County teams must drive to the ER, assess the patient and decide whether a 72-hour involuntary hold is warranted.

That takes time.

Under the pilot, ER doctors at five hospitals will receive county training to make that determination themselves. Providence Saint John's is the only Westside facility in the group, according to the Westside Current. The other four are Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, UCI Health in Lakewood, Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Torrance and UCLA West Valley Medical Center.

"Every hour our crisis teams spend inside an emergency room is an hour they aren't out in the community responding to someone who is having a mental health emergency in their home or on the street," Fourth District Supervisor Janice Hahn said at the board meeting, according to the LA Daily News.

Hahn introduced the motion with Third District Supervisor Lindsey Horvath as co-author. Horvath said the current system forces the county to pull crisis responders off the street when ER staff could handle the evaluation themselves.

The pilot follows Assembly Bill 416, a 2025 state law authored by Assembly Member Krell that for the first time allowed emergency physicians at private hospitals to become certified to initiate 5150 holds. Before that legislation, only designated county clinicians and certain law enforcement personnel could authorize the holds at private facilities.

County data shows the mobile crisis teams performed 24,000 in-person responses in 2025 and currently serve 35 non-county hospital ERs. Between 2023 and 2025, 911 calls to the LA County Sheriff's Department citing mental illness concerns dropped 16%, and arrests from those calls fell 24%, while calls to the county's Department of Mental Health help line rose 31%.

Hahn said she hopes training at the five pilot hospitals can be completed by the end of 2026. The Department of Mental Health must report back to the board within 120 days on implementation progress, training protocols and any barriers. The county was also directed to develop a plan to expand the program to eligible private hospitals countywide by the end of 2027.

Providence Saint John's has not commented on the program's local rollout. Residents experiencing a mental health crisis can call the county's Department of Mental Health help line at (800) 854-7771 or dial 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.