Rhode Island Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (RI-CCBHC) Expansion - Newport County Community Mental Health Center’s (NCCMHC) current CCBHC seeks to enhance and expand evidence based practices to individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances (SED) young adults with emerging SMI, and chronically homeless adults with SMI. With three collaborators (Thrive, Inc., Community Care Alliance, and CODAC Behavioral Health), NCCHMC will provide expanded and enhanced CCBHC services to 9,000 people across the State of Rhode Island in the first year of the project. A total of 10,000 (unduplicated) people will be served over two years. The project will expand evidence based behavioral health practices to over 495 adults, children and families who currently do not have access to these services in the first year and over 1,125 over the two year grant period.
Covering an area of 1,212 square miles and a population of 1,059,639 (72.5% white, 15.5% Hispanic,8.2% Black, and 7.7% Other, Rhode Island has the highest adult rate of mental illness nationally (24%) and 34% of Rhode Island children who needed mental health treatment or counseling in the past 12 months did not receive it. Older adults are admitted to mental health and substance abuse facilities at much higher rates than the national average. Psychiatric hospitalization rates for children and adults exceed those for other New England states and the needs assessment indicates a serious lack of availability of intensive in-home behavioral healthcare. Rates of attempted suicide and opioid overdose are above the national average. Young adults with first episode serious mental illness have had limited early access to research based treatment to increase recovery and reduce disability.
The project has three main goals: 1.) NCCMHC will maintain its current fully operational Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic providing a complete scope of CCBHC services to individuals eligible for Medicaid as well as those who are uninsured or under insured; 2.) NCCMHC together with its contract partners will enhance existing CCBHC services by expanding/initiating by maintaining/expanding its current array of four evidence based practices (EBP), Assertive Community Treatment, Individual Placement Services (Supportive Employment), Consolidated Specialty Care (young adult RAISE/Healthy Transitions), and Positive Parenting Program (Triple P). The following new EBPs will be added: Integrated Health Homes, Permanent Supportive Housing, and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. 3.) NCCMHC and its DCO partners will implement infrastructure enhancements to improve the overall quality and coordination of care. Additional workforce development and infrastructure improvements (training in recovery/person-centered care, Motivational Interviewing, CLAS standards), and infrastructure for telemedicine, implementation of a recovery-oriented, person-centered EHR with a measurement-based care component, and provision of free mobile phones to vulnerable clients, to improve both behavioral health and health outcomes of the people served.
