Eyerly Ball Community Mental Health Services (CMHS) will implement service improvements through its proposed CCBHC-IA project entitled, “Improving Access Procedures, Expanding Outpatient Substance Use Treatment Services, and Reducing Preventable Emergency Department Utilization and Hospital Readmissions through the Advancement of Services”. This project’s population of focus will be consumers of all ages of a low socioeconomic status who are experiencing substance use disorders (SUD) or co-occurring disorders (COD) within the catchment area of Boone, Story, Polk, and Warren counties in Iowa. With grant funds, Eyerly Ball CMHS proposes to implement Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) services onsite and to improve Same Day Access processes, allowing any consumer to complete an intake and receive level-of-care indicated referrals and next steps on the same day they request services. In order to properly incorporate these into Eyerly Ball CMHS’s continuum of care, the following project goals have been developed: reduce barriers to behavioral health services by providing coordination services in area clinics and through a Same Day Access process, increase treatment options for consumers with substance use disorders by expanding outpatient SUD and MAT services, and reduce emergency department utilization and hospital readmissions by implementing an interdisciplinary treatment team dedicated to consumer discharge follow ups. Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound objectives have been developed for each goal, including continuing integration of Behavioral Health Navigators into area primary care clinics, increasing the number of successful referrals to behavioral health and substance use evaluations made by the Behavioral Health Navigators, enabling 60% of consumers to receive an intake behavioral health or substance use assessment on the date requested with an annual 10% increase thereafter, engaging an active caseload of 30 consumers in the newly developed MAT program by the end of the second year of the project, implementing seven-day follow-up procedures for consumers who have been admitted to the hospital, and decreasing both hospital readmissions and emergency department utilization for our consumers by .5% each year of the project. Eyerly Ball CMHS will make use of the following evidence-based practices to provide a high quality of care to consumers participating in this project: Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), First Episode Psychosis (FEP), Wellness Action Recovery Plan (WRAP), Motivational Interviewing, Peer and Family Support Specialists, Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR). Fidelity is maintained to each of these evidence-based practices, and all treatment will be tailored to each individual’s developmental phase in life. Eyerly Ball CMHS will serve 400 unduplicated consumers in our target population during each year of the project, serving a total of 1,200 unduplicated consumers over the project period of four years.
