The Windsor Police Service and Windsor Regional Hospital are launching a pilot program to provide more on the street help for people struggling with substance use and mental health issues.
The Nurse and Police Team (NPT) program will pair nursing professionals from Windsor Regional Hospital with frontline police officers with the goal of responding to non-emergency, substance use-related incidents.
Windsor Police Chief Jason Bellaire says they have to adapt as first responders to community needs.
"We really looked at through a humane lens but also through business principles. What is the widget we're building at the end of the production line? What are we trying to make here? When we look at it, define it and identify it, I think we can see a lot of change needs to happen to address the needs," he says.
The officer-nurse teams will try to provide proactive care to individuals struggling with substance use disorder and related challenges while connecting individuals in need with the appropriate support services, steering them away from the criminal justice system and hospital emergency rooms.
Bellaire says we need initiatives like this to meet the needs of the community and to reinvest back into our resources.
"Our paramedic services are really busy and they need to be left to do more emergent things. Our ER's are very busy and the nursing teams and doctor teams inside the ER are really busy with a lot of things. The police, lane integrity hasn't been the way for us. We've been doing it all, our members do it all," he says.
Windsor Police Chief Jason Bellaire and Windsor Regional Hospital President and CEO David Musyj speak during a news conference at Windsor Police Headquarters. May 4, 2023 (Photo by Rusty Thomson)
The emergency departments at Windsor Regional Hospital's Met Campus and Ouellette Campus sees around 7,000 mental health and substance abuse patients every year for everything around those issues and needed health care.
Windsor Regional Hospital President and CEO David Musyj says if the patients needs to come to the emergency department, they will be brought to the emergency department.
"The goal is if we can see them today to prevent an emergency room visit possibly two days from now, and go to where they are at, not requiring them to come to the emergency department," he says.
Musyj says Windsor police are on the front lines and the officers are the having to address situations like this immediately.
"They're reaching out to say 'we need help, we know these individuals on the streets, we can avoid having to bring them into the emergency department as our default.' They can have services immediately right then and there," he says.
Musyj adds this will help the individual but also everyone else coming into the emergency department for a broken arm or stitches because those individuals are being dealt with proactively in the community.
The NPT program will officially launch on May 12, 2023, with officer-nurse teams working on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m.
The program will run for the next three months, at which time it will be evaluated for further continuation.