The Rosecrance Stephenson County Outpatient Behavioral Healthcare Clinic will provide evidence-based substance use disorder and mental health treatment in Stephenson County, Illinois. This new outpatient clinic would fill a gap in services by providing access to critical treatment to individuals, regardless of insurance coverage within the Stephenson county residents own community. The project would increase access by removing barriers to promote high quality, effective treatment and recovery services for adults with serious mental illness (SMI), children with serious emotional disturbance (SED), and individuals with Substance Use Disorders (SUD).
Stephenson County Outpatient Behavioral Healthcare Clinic will address community needs and provide treatment options for individuals. In 2019, the FHN Community Health Needs Assessment identified behavioral healthcare as a top priority issue facing the community. This was demonstrated through an increasingly higher level of suicide and more emergency room visits for behavioral health needs. Unfortunately, the suicide rate was significantly higher in Stephenson County than the state, reflecting the need for more behavioral health services. Additionally, HRSA has identified Stephenson County in need of at least 3.41 FTE mental health providers to achieve the target population to practitioner ratio, without even considering the shortage of SUD treatment providers in the County.
Following the closure of many mental health treatment centers in Illinois in recent years, affordable community-based behavioral healthcare is more important than ever. The Rosecrance Stephenson County Outpatient Behavioral Healthcare Clinic will provide high-quality, evidence-based care in a setting that is therapeutic and conducive for healing for mental health and substance abuse patients. The proposed project for this Behavioral Healthcare clinic will be staffed with four clinicians – two mental health clinicians and two substance abuse clinicians. We also plan to provide at least 4 hours of telepsychiatry per week. The clinic would offer both individual and group services targeted to meet individual treatment and recovery needs. The clinic will serve 200 individuals in Year 1 and 200 individuals Year 2 and annually thereafter.
The clinic would collaborate with the crisis response services already provided by Rosecrance in Stephenson County. Our Mobile Crisis Response (MCR) team currently responds to crisis calls within 90 minutes at a variety of locations, including hospital EDs, residences, schools, or other community locations. This MCR team would link patients to the new outpatient clinic with the goal to decrease utilization of high-cost institutional or inpatient care and increase utilization of community-based services. Rosecrance crisis programming focuses on individualized, person-centered services aimed at realizing the recovery of each individual receiving services and their integration into their home community. The services are designed for intervening in mental health crises or potential crises at the earliest opportunity possible in order to minimize exacerbation of symptoms and problems for the individual. With this funding necessary resources for individuals post crisis to receive behavioral health services would now be available within their own community which would minimize system reliance on more restrictive and expensive services, such as incarceration or emergency department services.
Eventually, the clinic will be self-sustaining through revenue generated by billing applicable third-party payers. We request funding to assist with our initial equipment needs; recruiting, hiring, and training staff; and to offset operating deficits during the initial start-up phase.