Mental health crisis teams serving Bel Air, Holmby Hills and the rest of Los Angeles County will spend less time inside hospital emergency rooms and more time responding to community calls under a pilot program the Board of Supervisors approved Tuesday, Aug. 11.

The county's 71 mobile crisis teams currently lose an average of 1,100 hours every month traveling to private hospitals to conduct psychiatric evaluations known as 5150 holds. The new pilot will train ER doctors at five private hospitals to handle those holds themselves.

Supervisor Janice Hahn authored the motion. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose 3rd District covers Bel Air and Holmby Hills, co-authored it.

"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," Hahn said at the Aug. 11 meeting, according to the Beverly Press.

A 5150 hold allows an authorized professional to detain someone for a psychiatric evaluation for up to 72 hours when they pose a risk to themselves or others. At least 35 private hospitals across LA County lack physicians certified to initiate those holds and instead call county crisis teams. Assembly Bill 416, a 2025 state law, changed that by allowing private-hospital ER doctors to become certified for the first time.

The pilot launches at the five hospitals that rely most heavily on county teams: Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, UCI Health in Lakewood, Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Torrance and UCLA West Valley Medical Center.

Horvath said the program will preserve mobile teams for people who need help in the community while putting the expertise of bedside physicians to work for patients already in an emergency department.

The county's Alternative Crisis Response system dispatches mental health professionals rather than armed law enforcement to mental health emergencies. Between 2023 and 2025, mental-health-related calls to the LA County Sheriff's Department dropped 16%, and arrests from those calls fell 24%.

The Department of Mental Health must report back to the board within 120 days on the pilot's progress, including hospital participation and training protocols. That report is due by approximately mid-December. The motion also directs the department to develop a plan to expand the program to all eligible non-county hospitals by the end of 2027.