The state's police commissioner has questioned whether officers should attend many mental health incidents "at all" after the death of Krista Kach at Stockton in September.
Ms Kach, 47, died after a "bean bag" round fired by police pierced her heart following a nine-hour siege at her house.
She was the fourth person since May to die during an interaction with police while having a mental health episode.
Police deputy commissioner David Hudson told a state budget estimates hearing this week that the bean bag rounds remained suspended from use pending the outcome of "specialist testing".
"We've refused to re-engage it until that's completed and we get a report and we have a look at it," he said.
"I think the report was due at the end of last week, actually, but I haven't seen it as yet. But the Counter Terrorism Command would be looking at that."
Deputy commissioner Hudson said no officers had been charged over Ms Kach's shooting.
Ms Kach's family said in the days after her death that the way police had responded to her mental health episode was disturbing and heartbreaking.
About one third of police districts in NSW, including two in Northern Region, have clinicians to help deal with mental health incidents under the PACER scheme, but these experts are not engaged when the person in crisis has a weapon.
The NSW Health-funded program cuts out at 10pm.
Police commissioner Karen Webb told budget estimates that the service had sent two officers, one of them a psychologist, to London to investigate how other jurisdictions handled mental health incidents.
"There's a question that we need to ask ourselves: Does it need to be a police response at all in some cases?" she said.
"I can't speak for all the officers, but I'm sure there are police out there who don't want to be responding to this.
"We have trained officers to respond, but they're not trained clinicians. I don't want them to be trained clinicians.
"If there's someone else that's better, more appropriate to be responding to that individual at that time, then I think that's something we should consider.
"We will be attending, I imagine, where there's a threat to someone's life. Other people aren't skilled to. But I think 70 per cent of matters could probably be dealt with without seeing a police officer."
Greens MP Sue Higginson said police had "killed 24 people in 12 months", including 15 experiencing mental distress, and "today nothing would be different" in how police responded to an incident such as the one that ended in Ms Kach's death.
"We know that we have hit a kind of crisis point in terms of the deaths resulting from police responding to mental health incidences," she told budget estimates.
"We don't actually have anything different yet in place. We have people overseas, we have people feeding in, we're looking at things, we have PACER, which we know is limited, even though it may be good.
"We don't yet have anything different from the day, say, Krista Kach was killed to today."
Ms Higginson asked Commissioner Webb if she had "reviewed the material" around Ms Kach's death.
Commissioner Webb said she had but "it's a matter that's still before the coroner and it'd be way too premature for me to review that".
Police Minister Yasmin Catley told the hearing the PACER program was "certainly doing a good job".
"I am told that, in instances where they appeared with a mental health patient in an incident, it is reducing by about more than 50 per cent that person then presenting at a hospital, for instance," she said.
"I would like to have a look at that review that is presented to the Police Commissioner from those senior officers ... who are having a look at what's going on in international and other jurisdictions here, so that we can best look at how to provide that first response to people with mental health."
