La Maestra’s Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) will serve low-income, uninsured and underinsured individuals in central, east and south San Diego County, California. The overall goal of this project is to stabilize people in crisis by increasing access to comprehensive behavioral health services including substance use disorder services (SUDS) by working with the existing established county-wide network to provide: 24/7 crisis intervention services for individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) or SUD patients, including opioid use disorders; children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbance (SED); and individuals with co-occurring mental and substance disorders (COD). La Maestra expects to achieve this goal by reaching the following objectives: 1) screen a minimum of 8,000 patients annually for SUD and/or COD using evidence based screening tools or 16,000 patients during the two year project period; 2) provide comprehensive outpatient mental health and SUD to 2,000 individuals annually or 4,000 over the two year project period; 3) conduct at least 3,000 HIV and viral hepatitis screenings annually; 4) provide onsite MAT services for a minimum of 150 adult patients annually; and 5) offer and provide onsite primary care, behavioral health, and social services to 80% of all patients served at the CCBHC through comprehensive case management.
In 2019, La Maestra served 45,716 patients. According to 2019 clinic data, 84% of patients served are living at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, 26% of patients are uninsured and 68% are underinsured. In addition, 58% of patients are Hispanic/Latino and 60% prefer to be spoken to in a language other than English. According to the 2018 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), 24.6% of adults in the service area reported needing help for self-reported mental, emotional and/or alcohol or drug use and did not receive treatment. Additionally, 40.8% of teens reported needing help for mental health problems, a 21.8% increase since the last survey done in 2016. Furthermore, 174,000 people out of 1,072,000 surveyed reported seriously thinking about committing suicide in 2018. This suggests a need for increased access to comprehensive behavioral health and SUDS to stabilize people and respond to health and wellness needs in the service area.
La Maestra will adhere to current Evidence Based Practices (EBP) and expand its Family Wellness Unit and Wellness Supportive Services departments to become a CCBHC within 120 days of grant award. La Maestra has a proven track record of opening new clinic sites and obtaining certifications including patient centered medical home (PCHM) Level III, the highest level of PCMH recognition. Additionally, all performance assessments and evaluations for this program will be conducted by Dr. Andrew Sarkin, Ph.D., an independent, third party evaluator from the University of San Diego’s Health Services Research Center (HSRC). HSRC is a comprehensive research unit that was established in 1991. Dr. Sarkin has over two decades of evaluation experience in behavioral health and clinical psychology.
