Sunday, April 20, 2025
4/20/2025
Integration and enhancement of current mental health, substance use disorder and primary care treatment under the umbrella of a CCBHC. - The Adapt CCBHC Project will increase integration of current behavioral health and primary care services in Douglas County and expand these services to better serve the target populations. Activities for the funding include moving from three EHRs to one for the entire agency, developing a single intake process, providing open rather than scheduled access to care, and addressing workforce issues that contribute to staff and consumer turnover. Target populations include consumers with serious mental illness, a severe substance use disorder, and youth with severe emotional disturbance. Other populations who will benefit are those experiencing disenfranchisement, such as minorities, homeless, and former military service members, especially those who are ineligible for or otherwise disenchanted with VA services. Because these populations can be high-needs members of the community, impacts on quality of care will directly benefit other community systems, such as hospital emergency department, jail, and law enforcement. Objectives of the program include: 1) Implementation of a single EHR to replace three EHRs currently in use. This will allow the coordination of care between providers of the medical and behavioral health services currently offered in the agency. 2) Reaching consumers when and where they are ready for services by decreasing the time between initial contact and service delivery from days to hours. Current time between first contact and assessment is about 2 weeks for standard behavioral health services. Tests of open access have indicated that this time can be reduced to the same day by adjusting the process for intake and a 5% increase in staffing. Implementing this across all behavioral health services would provide an increase in access to services. 3) Serving an additional 490 consumers each year of the grant, a 20% increase over the 2,450 already served. 4) Reducing staff turnover by 30%. This is achieved by decreasing caseloads, the main factor that contributes to burnout and staff turnover. Turnover makes it difficult to expand services since we recruit to fill vacant positions rather than expanded positions. A salary analysis to determine if there are positions that are not paid in line with other providers in the region. 5) Keeping consumers engaged in care, as measured by the 90-day and 180-day retention measures, which are expected to increase by 10% over the two-year project. The project will minimize intake processes and the time between when services are sought by consumers and when they are received. Our goal is to have services when and where a consumer needs them, that they do not experience a wrong door or dead end, and we have staff who are able to do the fulfilling work they trained to do.
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).