Wednesday, April 2, 2025
4/2/2025
State Grants for the Implementation, Enhancement, and Expansion of Medicaid and CHIP School-Based Services - The prevalence of behavioral health conditions among children and youth has reached an all-time high, with 23.3% of Nevada children having one or more mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral problem. Nevada ranks 7th for the highest rate of suicide, with youth and young adults accounting for 12% of suicide rate between 2017-2020. Acting as a central hub, schools serve as reliable settings for reaching and delivering essential health services, including behavioral health care, both proactively and reactively as needs arise. Recognizing the important role schools play in the lives of children, Nevada expanded coverage of school-based services/school health services (SBS/SHS) to all Medicaid-eligible children in 2019. Nevada also built a robust benefit set for SBS/SHS—covering basic screenings, nursing services, and treatment of mental health and substance use conditions. Despite these efforts, Nevada has yet to see broad utilization of SBS/SHS, despite their proven positive impacts. Nevada Medicaid’s preliminary needs assessment has identified barriers that deter schools from providing, and/or billing Medicaid for, SBS/SHS. These include complex Medicaid policies, costly electronic health record (EHR) systems, insufficient capacity for billing, and health care workforce shortages. Fragmented EHR and billing systems have further hindered timely access to SBS/SHS and led to gaps in data collection at both the school and state levels. Over the last year, Nevada Medicaid has taken important steps to refocus its efforts on ensuring children have equitable access to quality SBS/SHS. This federal grant opportunity is timely aligned with these efforts, along with those focused on addressing the state’s behavioral health crisis for children. If awarded, Nevada Medicaid will use these grant funds to support the establishment of a School Health Access (SHA) Resource Center to help increase the capacity of schools, statewide, to provide quality SBS/SHS that are reimbursable by Nevada Medicaid. Specifically, $500,000 will be used to contract with an expert consulting firm to help build the SHA Resource Center, develop procurement materials to pilot an EHR/billing vendor system, streamline Medicaid policies for SBS/SHS, create new innovative payment models for SBS/SHS, and develop, deploy, and report results of the final needs assessments within six months post award date. The remaining $2 million will be used to fund a pilot for testing EHR/billing vendor system for the last two years of the grant. To ensure sustainability throughout the award and post-award periods, Nevada Medicaid will continue to leverage legislative funding and other funding mechanisms. By launching the robust SHA Resource Center and streamlining access to Medicaid-funded SBS/SHS across schools in Nevada, the state will address the immediate needs of students and schools and lay the foundation for overall healthier communities across all the geographical areas of the state. References: Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative. 2020-2021 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) data query. Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB). www.childhealthdata.org. Youth Suicide: Behaviors and Circumstances Nevada, 2020. Office of Analytics, Department of Health and Human Services. (2022, February).https://dhhs.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/dhhsnvgov/content/Programs/Office_of_Analytics/Youth%20Suicide%20Behaviors%20and%20Circumstances%20Nevada%202020.pdf
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).