Title 36 Diversions

At the request of Pima County and the Community Partnership of Southern Arizona, on October 1, 2010, SAMHC began to provide a new service called a Title 36 Diversion. One goal of this service is to ensure that the only individuals who are hospitalized under Arizona Revised Statute Title 36 (commonly known as involuntary commitment), are those who are dangerous to themselves or others and cannot be appropriately treated in a less restrictive setting than a hospital. Another goal of this service is to minimize the amount of funds that Pima County spends on involuntary hospitalization thereby increasing the money resources available for other behavioral health services.

The Title 36 Diversion service is utilized when an individual arrives at a hospital emergency department under an Application for Emergency Admission for Evaluation (often called an emergency petition) and the hospital believes the person should be required to stay in the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. SAMHC then sends a Diversion Liaison to conduct an assessment, review the situation with a SAMHC Psychiatrist, and to determine whether that individual can be safely diverted from being involuntarily hospitalized. If not, the individual continues to move through the involuntary commitment process. If so, the SAMHC Diversion Liaison helps to ensure that the individual is transferred to the more appropriate, less restrictive setting. Often that setting is SAMHC's observation Sub-acute Unit, described elsewhere on this site.