LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Aug. 11 approved a motion to launch a pilot program to train and authorize Emergency Room physicians at five private hospitals to conduct 5150 psychiatric holds, freeing up the county’s mental health crisis teams to respond more quickly to people experiencing emergencies in the community.
Under Hahn’s leadership, Los Angeles County has spent the past several years expanding its alternative crisis response system, which sends mental health professionals—rather than armed law enforcement—to people experiencing mental health crises. The county now has 71 mobile crisis response teams operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The expansion is working. As more people have turned to calling 988 and the county’s mental health crisis line for help, calls to law enforcement involving mental health crises have declined. Between 2023 and 2025, mental-health-related calls to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department dropped 16%, while arrests resulting from mental health calls fell 24%.
Now, Hahn wants to shorten the mental health crisis teams’ response times. One major drain on the teams’ resources comes from responding to calls from private hospital emergency rooms to initiate 5150 holds. A 5150 hold allows authorized professionals to detain a person against their will for a psychiatric evaluation for up to 72 hours when they pose a risk to themselves or others.
While county hospitals have long had staff authorized to initiate 5150 holds, a new 2025 state law (Assembly Bill 416) only recently allowed emergency room doctors in private hospitals to become LPS-authorized, meaning they are certified to initiate these holds. Right now, at least 35 private hospitals across Los Angeles County do not have LPS-authorized physicians and instead rely on calling the county’s Psychiatric Mobile Response Teams (PMRTs). County mental health crisis teams spend an average of 1,100 hours every month responding to hospitals to conduct 5150 evaluations.
“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,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn. “We have built up a strong alternative crisis response system, and now we need to make sure we are using those resources as effectively as possible. If a patient is already in an emergency room, we should empower trained ER doctors to evaluate them and initiate a 5150 hold, rather than making them wait for a county crisis team to arrive.”
The motion directs the LA County Department of Mental Health or DMH to launch a pilot program to train physicians to become LPS certified. The pilot will start at the five private hospitals that currently rely most heavily on county crisis teams for 5150 evaluations. Those five hospitals are: Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, UCI Health in Lakewood, Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Torrance, and UCLA West Valley Medical Center.
The motion also directs DMH to develop a plan to expand the training program to all eligible non-County, non-LPS-designated hospitals in Los Angeles County by the end of 2027.
The motion requires DMH to report back to the Board within 120 days on the implementation of the pilot, including hospital participation, training and certification protocols, and any barriers to implementation. DMH will provide quarterly updates thereafter and develop a plan for countywide expansion based on the lessons learned from the pilot.
