The Fourth Branch of Emergency Response: Expanding Flathead County’s Crisis Assistance Team
When an emergency strikes in Flathead County, our community instinctively knows who to call. Dialing 911 brings help to our rural highways and city streets: firefighters responding to structure and wildland fires, emergency medical personnel providing lifesaving care, and law enforcement officers protecting public safety.
Yet for years, an escalating number of 911 calls have involved individuals experiencing severe psychiatric distress, substance use crises, or suicidal ideation. Flathead County faces critical behavioral health hurdles, underscored by a five-year aggregate suicide rate of 26.5 deaths per 100,000 residents—nearly double the national average*. For too long, addressing these emergencies fell solely on patrol officers, paramedics, and already crowded hospital emergency rooms.
The Flathead City-County Health Department (FCCHD) is changing that dynamic through the Crisis Assistance Team (CAT). With the recent award of a four-year, $2.45 million federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Flathead County is poised to make behavioral health crisis response a seamless, permanent branch of our emergency services.
As Flathead County Commissioner Randy Brodehl noted regarding the impact of the program and the grant:
“This gives us consistency for a 24/7 response. We’ve shown operationally that [CAT] decreases the hours law enforcement is tied to these calls and puts more boots on the ground where they're needed. It's been successful, and this is an extension of that.”
Expanding CAT’s Reach
CAT deploys trained, compassionate behavioral health professionals directly into the community to de-escalate acute mental health and substance use crises in real time, connecting residents to community-based care instead of jail cells or emergency beds. And with this funding opportunity, it plans to eliminate the nightly 12-hour coverage gap, transforming CAT into a 24/7/365, face-to-face Behavioral Health Practitioner-Only mobile crisis infrastructure while launching a proactive daytime Community Outreach Team (COT).
Currently, CAT is limited to a 12-hour daily operating window. While daytime interventions have provided vital relief, behavioral health crises do not follow business hours. When crisis calls arrive at midnight or 3:00 AM, the entire responsibility shifts back to patrol deputies, municipal police, and emergency room staff.
The four-year SAMHSA Mobile Crisis Team Partnerships (MCTP) grant provides $452,866 in the first year, increasing to $746,266 in the fourth year. This investment enables Flathead County to:
- Close the Nightly Blind Spot: Expand crisis clinician staffing to deliver uninterrupted, face-to-face 24/7/365 field response across our rural and frontier communities.
- Launch the Community Outreach Team (COT): Establish a dedicated daytime unit to provide proactive mobile care coordination, integrate physical health services, and offer immediate access to telepsychiatry for high-utilizer populations and incarcerated individuals.
- Deploy Evidence-Based Care: Use established clinical approaches, including trauma-informed care, Stanley-Brown Safety Planning, and the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS).
- Build Long-Term Local Sustainability: Use electronic health record integration and dispatch data to demonstrate diversion metrics, optimize Medicaid billing workflows, and transition expanded services into a permanent local budget model.
Currently staffed by two full-time licensed therapists and three full-time care coordinators, the team operates 7 days per week, 10:00 AM – 10:00 PM. The Health Department will use this SAMHSA funding to expand staffing to five full-time therapists, five full-time care coordinators, and one full-time nurse. The new staffing structure will be implemented strategically over the four-year cycle of the grant.
The expansion of the Crisis Assistance Team was planned in response to increased call volume and utilization of this service in Flathead County. In 2025, the team served 450 unique individuals and handled more than 1,400 calls. These responses resulted in approximately 300 diversions from hospital emergency rooms and 50 diversions from the detention center. In 2026, the team is on pace to exceed this volume by a wide margin.
Flathead City-County Health Department Behavioral Health Supervisor, James Pyke, spoke to the importance of expanding the program in Flathead County:
“I am incredibly proud of our Crisis Assistance Team personnel and the tireless work ethic shown while supporting our community. I am excited to have an additional funding stream to support our current personnel, expand the program, and meet the needs of the community at a broader scale. We are excited to learn, grow, and continue to implement a professional and sustainable service for Flathead County.”
A 4th Branch of Emergency Response
Our vision for Flathead County is not to reinvent emergency services, but to complete them. CAT is not an isolated experiment or an alternative hotline; it is an organized, clinical public service integrated directly into our existing 911 dispatch network.
You do not call CAT directly. When a resident dials 911 during an acute crisis, dispatchers evaluate the call. Alongside Fire, EMS, and Law Enforcement, CAT serves as the fourth branch of emergency response—ensuring the right response reaches the right person at the right time.
Across our rural roadways and outlying communities, Flathead County Sheriff Brian Heino emphasized how essential this 24-hour resource is for patrol deputies:
“Flathead County is a large county, and when deputies are tied up for hours on a mental health call, it impacts our ability to respond to other emergencies. CAT has been a tremendous resource by connecting people in crisis with the care they need, rather than relying on the Detention Center as the only option. Expanding CAT to 24-hour coverage will be especially important for our night shifts, giving deputies another resource while helping people get the right care at the right time.”
In the city, Kalispell Police Patrol Captain Chad Fetveit underscored how critical this partnership is on municipal streets:
“CAT is a force multiplier in our city and county. Law enforcement officers are not mental health providers but, by our nature, are often called to confront these challenges. Having CAT significantly reduces the amount of time our officers spend on situations that are not law enforcement related and is a resource that better meets the needs of those in crisis. This helps our officers to focus on enforcement activities. CAT is an amazing community partner that is invaluable to first responders and citizens in our valley!”
This integration relieves pressure across our entire local healthcare and emergency system, allowing patrol officers to return to active patrols while ensuring medical units remain ready for trauma and structural calls. Kalispell Fire Chief Jay Hagen echoed that perspective from the fire and EMS frontline:
“We are grateful for the Flathead County Crisis Assistance Team and the grant support that will expand this vital service to 24/7 coverage. A crisis can happen at any hour, and having trained professionals available around the clock will help people receive compassionate, appropriate care when they need it most. This program is an invaluable partner to our firefighters and paramedics and a tremendous resource for our community.”
Flathead County is not alone in recognizing this need. Fellow Montana communities are making similar strides under SAMHSA's mobile crisis expansion: Yellowstone and Missoula Counties recently received comparable four-year, $3 million SAMHSA grants. Across our state, communities are acknowledging that modern public safety requires clinical crisis tools in the field.
This federal award reflects broad, unified backing from local partners. Strong letters of endorsement were submitted by the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office, Kalispell Police Department, Kalispell Fire Department, Logan Health, and Flathead Emergency Communications Center, all emphasizing the need for round-the-clock behavioral health support in the field.
By embedding mental health professionals into our 911 response system around the clock, Flathead County is working to ensure that residents experiencing behavioral health crises receive empathetic, professional support to help stabilize their situations and connect them with appropriate care.
* Montana Department of Health and Human Services Office of Vital Statistics and National Center for Health Statistics – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020 – 2024 aggregate data. Flathead County’s age-adjusted suicide rate was 26.4 deaths per 100,000 residents, compared to the U.S. national baseline of 13.9 deaths per 100,000 over the same five-year period.