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This paper represents a call to divert healthcare spending away from the more expensive traditional approaches of emergency department assessment followed by a referral to acute inpatient hospital services to a full continuum that includes less expensive specialized crisis services and accessibility of vital psychiatric inpatient resources. The essential crisis services that will be defined within this paper are (1) regional or statewide crisis call centers coordinating in real time, (2) centrally deployed, 24/7 mobile crisis response teams and (3) short-term, “sub-acute” residential crisis stabilization programs.