Acute Behavioral Health Services for Children

Tufts Health RITogether

The following services represent the highest level of service intensity based on a member’s need for either a locked or staff-secured 24-hour clinical setting that offers full behavioral health management.

Emergency Service Intervention
Observation/Crisis Stabilization/Holding Bed
Inpatient Acute Hospitalization
Acute Residential Treatment

Click here for the complete Provider Tool for Tufts Health Rhode Island Together Behavioral Health Prior Authorization (PA) and Notification Grid.

For additional details about covered behavioral health services, please see our Provider Manual.

For additional questions, please contact us:

The Rhode Island Provider Services phone number: 844.301.4093
The Rhode Island Provider Services fax number: 857.304.6403

Emergency service intervention

Emergency care service interventions are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, face-to-face care management and intervention of an individual experiencing a behavioral health crisis. Such crisis includes an imminent, real and significant risk of serious harm to self or others that requires immediate treatment. The activities are conducted by a licensed behavioral health provider in a hospital emergency room, residential placement setting, the individual’s home, police station or other community setting that the family and the child-family competent clinician agree is safe and clinically suitable to resolve the behavioral health crisis.

The provider ensures that each member’s aftercare/discharge plan will be shared with the member’s primary care provider/pediatrician within three (3) business days of the emergency room discharge. That aftercare/discharge plan will also be shared with our Care Management Department within three (3) business days of ER discharge.

Observation/crisis stabilization/holding bed

A secure and protected, medically staffed, psychiatrically supervised program designed for those members who, as a result of psychiatric disorder, are an acute and significant danger to themselves or others, or who are acutely and significantly disabled and cannot meet their basic needs and functions, and who require extended observation and treatment in order to determine the most appropriate level of care and to avoid acute inpatient hospitalization.

Inpatient acute hospitalization

Services provided in a hospital with an acute psychiatric unit, or freestanding detoxification facility staffed by license physicians (including psychiatrists) with 24-hour skilled nursing in a structure treatment milieu for the treatment of members with a mental health or substance use disorder of sudden onset and short, severe course who cannot be safely or effectively treated in a less intensive level of care.

Acute residential treatment (ARTS)

A community-based short-term service or hospital step-down that provides comprehensive multidisciplinary behavioral health evaluation and treatment in a staff setting offering high levels of supervision, structure, restrictiveness and intense treatment on a 24-hour basis. The treatment should include individual, family and group clinical therapy, crisis management, and medical evaluation and management.

Incident reporting

Submit the Adverse Incident Report Form (PDF)

Release of information

Your Tufts Health Plan patients must complete the Authorization to Disclose Protected Health Information (PDF) so you can coordinate care by sharing their health information.

When your Tufts Health Plan patients consent to letting primary care and behavioral health providers share information, complete the Combined MCE Behavioral Health Provider/Primary Care Provider Communication Form (PDF)