Arundel Lodge, a Community Mental Health Center operating in Annapolis, Maryland, submits this proposal, hereafter known as the COVID-19 Recovery Project, in partnership with the Maryland Behavioral Health Solutions (MBHS) and its provider network. The project will build capacity and deliver evidence-based behavioral health services to adults and children with mental health and co-occurring addiction treatment needs across the state of Maryland with special attention to uninsured and underinsured individuals, underserved minority populations, and veterans.
COVID-19 Recovery Project will serve 800 unduplicated individuals annually with a total of 1,600 lives across the lifespan of the project. Arundel Lodge and its partners will engage the target population in the availability of treatment for serious emotional disturbances (SED), serious mental illnesses (SMI), and co-occurring disorders (COD). COVID-19 Recovery Project goals include:
Goal #1: Restore needed outpatient services for the target population that addresses unmet need resulting from the pandemic.
Objective #1: Re-establish full complement of outpatient services support for both community and residential populations, establishing target population goals, outcome metrics, and reporting requirement at Arundel Lodge and with ten members of the MBHS provider network.
Objective #2: Provide/update trauma-informed training with clinical teams across the MBHS provider network, standardizing outcomes tools and tracking to support continuous quality improvement processes.
Goal #2: Increase capacity of CMHC staff to address crisis and emergency response, improve time to access care, and improve patient outcomes by facilitating access to timely hospital discharge information via the state’s health information exchange and standardizing staff use of episode tables/provider workflows.
Objective #1: Integrate the Chesapeake Regional Information System for Patients (CRISP) health information exchange (HIE) data – hospital admission/discharge – into the MBHS data warehouse and EMRs of participating MBHS agencies.
Outcome #2: Implement utilization of Greenspace Health, a patient assessment and outcomes tracking system standardized across the MBHS participating provider agencies, to improve and track client outcomes.
Goal #3: Improve and support the mental health of Arundel Lodge and MBHS provider network staff, focusing on organizational health, culture, and wellness programs and resources to complement existing Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and Human Resource (HR) programs.
Objective #1: Utilize technical assistance, training, and effective educational strategies to
improve behavioral health workforce engagement.
Objective #2: Collaborate across the COVID-19 Recovery Project to evaluate current EAP resources and implement evidence-based organizational health strategies.
Objective #3: Establish an Employee Emergency Fund that complements current H.R. efforts to support staff experiencing unforeseen crises resulting from COVID-19 related challenges.