Mobile Crisis Technology

Customer: Adapt Community Solutions

Organizational Profile
Adapt Community Solutions provides 24x7 crisis hotline and mobile crisis services. Adapt works closely with law enforcement, hospitals, social service agencies, schools, mental health agencies and substance abuse providers to ensure that individuals in crises receive the intervention most appropriate to address their needs.

Challenge

A person in distress calls the ACS crisis call center and begins to describe a potentially dangerous situation. While the person is still on the phone, a mobile team is dispatched through the push of a button. The mobile team members receive an email on their smartphones. The email gives the individual's name and address and any pertinent information that may keep the individual and the team members safe once the team arrives. An available mobile team nearest the individual is dispatched. During the crisis, the mobile team connects with an EHR via wireless laptops and smartphones to obtain information and enter documentation.

HarrisLOGIC was tasked with designing and implementing systems that a) provide continuous 24x7 crisis call service availability and b) provide the tools and resources to support mobile crisis response teams as described above.

Solution

HarrisLOGIC observed and consulted with call center staff to learn the dynamics of responding to crisis calls and to understand the information valuable to a mobile team in an emergency situation. HarrisLOGIC helped ACS develop workflows and then built reliable systems and tools to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.

HarrisLOGIC implemented the technology infrastructure which ensures the continuity of crisis call services even in the face of power failures, telco or ISP service outages, or disasters that completely wipe out the call center's facility.

HarrisLOGIC built a Voice Over IP (VoIP) system using redundant software PBX platforms on servers located in two different cities --- each server being capable of independently supporting all phone systems. All phone communications are delivered to and from the ACS call center over dedicated high-speed telecommunications circuits configured in a failover configuration. In the event of an outage, call agents have the ability to remotely log into servers to enable delivery of crisis phone calls to any wireless or land-line phone. This allows ACS to maintain crisis support services even in the event of a complete loss of systems at the call center.

HarrisLOGIC implemented a customized EHR which is integrated with the VoIP system to assist call agents in retrieving client information based on the incoming callerID of any crisis call.

HarrisLOGIC implemented technologies to decrease response times in emergencies and manage mobile crisis response teams. A GPS fleet management system actively dispatches and tracks ACS' fleet of vehicles. With the real-time vehicle tracking web interface, a call agent sees where the fleet is and dispatches the closet crisis team to a new call within seconds. In addition, HarrisLOGIC provided ACS mobile staff with wireless tools such as Blackberry smartphones (supported through Blackberry Enterprise servers) and broadband Internet cards to access email, calendar, contacts, tasks and notes, instant messaging and enterprise applications.

Lastly, HarrisLOGIC has implemented a monitoring and reporting system that tracks each call and the utilization of the system as a whole

Results and Benefits

The call center receives over 3,000 calls each month and dispatches over 600 calls each to mobile crisis response teams.

In over two years of providing the infrastructure for ACS, failover protections HarrisLOGIC has implemented have been tested numerous times. The call center has never experienced a situation in which continuous ability to receive crisis calls was interrupted, in spite of temporary outages called by power failures and a telco service interruption lasting several days.

HarrisLOGIC has built a crisis response technology system that is scalable and able to be managed efficiently. This state-of-the-art system can be replicate to other support crisis call centers and mobile crisis response teams.