It is imperative to emergency services work in the Commonwealth that this requirement be overturned.  The nature of crisis is unpredictable and may take longer than seven days to remedy to a level that a less restrictive service can be implemented to assist the individual in crisis.  With this being said, requiring assessments for every seven days of CI, will greatly impact the level of the care that the consumer receives as these assessments take on average 2-3 hours to complete.  This is valuable time that would be better spent providing brief therapeutic techniques to prevent such a high level of care and linkage to long term MH services in the community, rather than completing assessments. This will hamper CSB/BHA Emergency Services departments even more, as we work to provide the required follow up care post prescreen, and ensure that the individual has been linked to community resources post hospitalization/inpatient crisis stabilization care.  As of July 1, 2016, the regulations regarding Emergency Services in Virginia have been enhanced by ensuring that higher level clinicians are completing the tasks necessary to give appropriate care for those in crisis.  Please do not add an unnecessary element to an already complicated process, by requiring additional assessments that take away valuable time from an already brief by design, but necessary component of MH services.