Project Summary: Through the FY 2022 Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic Improvement and Advancement Grant (CCBHC-IA), Lubbock Regional MHMR Center, doing business as StarCare Specialty Health System (StarCare), aims to improve, advance, and sustain its current CCBHC-Expansion Project by increasing capacity for outpatient psychiatric services, enhancing Peer and Care Coordination services, increasing the number of adults receiving outpatient psychiatric services, expanding Care Coordination services to include children and adolescents, and upgrading Electronic Health Record (EHR) capabilities. The program will address disparities in care faced by those living in poverty and the uninsured. Capacity expansion will result in reduced wait times for appointments, ensuring no one in need is placed on a waitlist.
Project Name: StarCare Specialty Health System CCBHC-IA Project
Population to be Served: The population of focus for the proposed project will be adults diagnosed with mental illness, including serious mental illnesses (SMI). StarCare will also expand its current Care Coordination program to include services for children ages 3-17 with serious emotional disturbances (SED). The geographic catchment area is the West Texas counties of Cochran, Crosby, Hockley, Lubbock, and Lynn.
Strategies and Interventions: By utilizing all nine required core CCBHC services, StarCare will implement high-quality services that are recovery-oriented, trauma-informed, and equity-based. Strategies include increasing program capacity through enhanced Peer and Care Coordination services for adults, expanding current Care Coordination services to include children and adolescents, and upgrading StarCare’s EHR platform to better capture data.
Project Goals and Measurable Objectives: The goals of the project are to 1.) increase access to mental health services for adults by adding additional slots, 2.) expand current CCBHC mental health care coordination services to include children and adolescents, and 3.) advance data collection capabilities through the infrastructure development necessary to continue meeting CCBHC certification criteria. The measurable objectives are: 1.) to provide psychiatric care coordination services to an additional 100-125 unduplicated adults each year of the grant who have no health insurance or funding source to pay for care. Ten percent of those served through increased capacity will be connected to peer services. This data will be captured through SAMHSA’s National Outcome Measures (NOMs) and EHR reporting, 2.) to provide Care Coordination services to an additional 10-15 unduplicated children/adolescents during each year of the grant. This data will be captured through NOMs and EHR reporting, and 3.) During the first year of the grant, StarCare will upgrade and expand the capabilities of its current EHR platform to better capture client data, including NOMs data, for accurate monitoring and reporting. This objective will be measured by the successful implementation of the upgraded system.
These goals will result in increased access to behavioral health care for consumers with no insurance or resources, reduced appointment wait times/no waitlist, increased access to behavioral health care locally for children and adolescents, and addressing behavioral health disparities by expanding the ability to capture and report data regarding individuals impacted by these disparities and improving service delivery through a quality improvement plan.
