Assessments & Triage

AI-powered assessments and triage in behavioral health refer to systems that conduct structured clinical screenings through conversational interfaces (phone, chat, or digital forms) to determine a patient's clinical needs and appropriate level of care. These systems use validated clinical instruments — such as ASAM criteria for substance use, PHQ-9 for depression, GAD-7 for anxiety, and Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale — delivered in a natural, conversational format rather than as cold clinical questionnaires. In traditional behavioral health admissions, clinical screening happens during an in-person or phone assessment conducted by a licensed clinician. This creates a bottleneck: clinicians are expensive, their time is limited, and scheduling delays mean patients wait days for their initial assessment. AI triage doesn't replace the clinical assessment but rather conducts preliminary screening that informs and accelerates the clinical process. The triage component determines where a patient should be directed based on their screening results: residential treatment, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, standard outpatient, or crisis intervention. This routing decision considers clinical acuity, safety risk, functional impairment, and recovery environment — the same factors a clinician would weigh, but assessed through structured AI-guided conversation.