Rising to the challenge: Behavioral Health team turns surge into strongest month

By Jenny Nailling, Intermountain Health Internal Communications

December 2025 was a defining month for Platte Valley Hospital’s Behavioral Health team. The department saw a 50% increase in referrals and 25% increase in evaluations compared to November, making it the busiest month since the department was formally established just one year ago.  

Created in February 2025, the Behavioral Health department is relatively new at Platte Valley. “The hospital has always provided Behavioral Health services, but the need has increased in the Brighton area,” said Kaitlyn Bennett, LCSW, Behavioral Health consult manager at Platte Valley.

Facing their busiest month yet, Kaitlyn and her team leveraged analytics from Epic to translate the volume spike into actionable staffing changes.

“There’s a really cool tool in Epic that I used called SlicerDicer,” Kaitlyn said. “You can filter based off chief complaint in the Emergency Department and by hour of the day and day of the week.” She credits the tool for helping her redesign staffing around real-time patient trends.

The analysis revealed a consistent pattern: Behavioral Health patients were arriving most often in the late afternoon. “Prior to that, we had one clinician on in the morning and one in the evening,” Kaitlyn said. “When we saw there was more patient volume in the middle of the day, we overlapped shifts so we could see more patients at a time.”

While the analytics helped, December still presented an unexpected operational challenge. Intermountain’s Telecrisis service, which typically provides after-hours psychiatric evaluations, was temporarily paused. Kaitlyn was informed of this change about a month in advance so she and her team could prepare.

“That meant if a patient needed an evaluation in the middle of the night when we’re not here, they would be waiting until the morning,” Katilyn said. “This was really the driving factor for why we changed our schedules and used the SlicerDicer tool to figure out when would be the best time for our clinicians to overlap with each other so we could see as many patients as possible.”

The timing could not have been more difficult, yet the team rose to meet it. Kaitlyn focused on transparency and preparation: “I think I was overly communicative about it,” she said. “I would remind them that this change is coming, and thankfully the team was very flexible and willing to come in at different times.”

Their adaptability paid off. In the highest-volume month they’ve ever seen, the team still achieved over 90% on all KPIs, their best performance to date, even without full after-hours support from Telecrisis.  

Amid the volume and the pressure, the team stayed grounded in their priority: care for patients in crisis.

“Primarily our role is to evaluate patients who are in psychiatric crisis — typically on mental health holds for either danger to self, danger to others or grave disability,” Kaitlyn said. They assess risk, determine next steps with the care teams, and help connect patients to inpatient psychiatric services or create safe discharge plans with tailored resources.

Substance use is another core component of their work, including arranging medical or social detox and supporting families. Kaitlyn calls social work a ‘bridge job’ because it moves patients from one point to the next with tools, resources and a sense of safety.

Building trust quickly is essential. “I present as very curious and explain how I want to hear their story,” she said. “When you open the door for somebody to express suicidal ideation in a nonjudgmental way, people really rise to the occasion to talk about that.”

Throughout the highs and lows, Kaitlyn remains shoulder-to-shoulder with her team. “The fact that I was in it with them helped: on the frontlines, seeing patients and going through the same process as each team member. This created a sense of camaraderie that we are a team and I am there for them during these challenges,” she said.

Her focus was simple but powerful: gratitude. “I tried my best to show how grateful I was for my team throughout the whole process — acknowledging that this is extremely challenging and we’re doing it together.”

Telecrisis support returned on Jan. 1, bringing relief. Kaitlyn looks forward to seeing how her team can maintain or build on their success now that they're fully resourced.

Platte Valley’s Behavioral Health team showed what’s possible when data, teamwork and human-centered leadership come together. By using Epic insights to work smarter — and by staying connected to one another through a challenging month — they not only met demand; they raised the bar for Behavioral Health services across the region.