URAC Core 23 -- Consumer Safety Mechanism -- Suicide Prevention Policy

We have learned in recent weeks that URAC has a very specific notion of what is required of protocols for handling potentially suicidal callers. This notion is not expressed in a standard, but falls under the broad requirements of Core 23. That standard provides:

The organization has a mechanism to respond on an urgent basis to situations that pose an immediate threat to the health and safety of consumers.

Of course, as I’ve noted elsewhere in an earlier blog about this standard, URAC expects a comprehensive system of mechanisms to respond to a wide variety of urgent situations that threaten consumers. However, it appears that, to the extent a URAC applicant has a specific mechanism regarding suicide, URAC requires that the applicant use national standards regarding handling suicide calls when it develops that policy.

Our source for this is a recent URAC desktop review summary that one of our readers sent us for review. Citing the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s publication, Facts About Suicide, as well as publications from Suicide Awareness Voices of Education and the National Quality Forum, the URAC reviewer commented that, “ At a minimum, this policy and process must include the process where any staff member, who has the potential to receive a consumer telephone call, can obtain a real-time assistance from another staff number while NOT hanging up, transferring, or putting on hold the caller.”