Project Abstract Summary
Comprehensive Healthcare (CHC), a Community Mental Health Center in Walla Walla County, Washington since 2013, will engage in planning, development, and implementation of a CCBHC that meets the CCBHC Certification Criteria. Comprehensive Healthcare seeks to improve access to community-based mental health and substance use disorder treatment and support, including 24/7 crisis services, to anyone in the Walla Walla County who needs support, regardless of their ability to pay or place of residence. As a CCBHC, CHC will focus on serving any individual with a mental health or substance use disorder who seeks care, including those with serious mental illness (SMI), substance use disorder (SUD) including opioid use; children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbance (SED); individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance disorders (COD); and individuals experiencing a mental health or substance use-related crisis. CHC strives to address health disparities and provides services to individuals regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, and/or socioeconomic status.
Over the course of this four-year grant CHC will serve a total of 750 unduplicated individuals: 100 in Year One, 150 in Year Two, 200 in Year Three, and 300 in Year Four. Strategies and interventions will include system and service transformation to ensure timely access to treatment, transformation of service structures in improve engagement in ongoing treatment services, services and supports to minimize psychiatric inpatient admissions and recidivism, outreach and education to decrease unnecessary emergency department utilization, and training to increase practitioner skills and competencies.
Goals and objectives will be achieved by improving service delivery structures through the hiring of a consultant, the formation of a Transformation Committee, increasing outreach and engagement, and ensuring timely access by hiring staff to increase service delivery capacity and hiring of bilingual staff and/or representatives of marginalized populations to support services to underserved populations. CHC will also increase the competencies of staff as they continue to respond to the effects of the COVID pandemic on the mental health and substance use patterns of Walla Walla County residents.