Tuesday, April 29, 2025
4/29/2025
FY 2024 Behavioral Health Service Expansion - PROJECT ABSTRACT Description of Proposed Project: Southwest Utah Community Health Center dba Family Healthcare (SWUCHC) was established in 2002 to address the healthcare needs of the low-income and uninsured population of a multi-county region of 4,520 square miles in southwestern Utah. SWUCHC currently provides comprehensive medical, dental, integrated behavioral health, and optometry services from 4 locations to residents from four Utah counties (Washington, Iron, Kane, Beaver). The service area sits at the intersection of Utah, Arizona, and Nevada, and is 150 miles from the nearest major metropolitan area. SWUCHC provides fully integrated behavioral health services including MOUD and psychiatry, case management, and care coordination. Needs to be Addressed: Health disparities within the service area and target population include ethnicity, immigration status, education, poverty, lack of behavioral health care. Much of the service area is rural and experiences higher than average rates of substance use morbidity and suicide, poverty and economic fragility, lack of insurance, and linguistic isolation. Among all states, Utah ranks 11th highest in the share of adults with any mental illness. Additionally, it ranks 3rd highest for adults with serious mental illness, and 4th highest for adults with serious thoughts of suicide. The share of young adults in Utah with poor mental health more than doubled over the last 10 years. In 2021, opioid overdose deaths accounted for 67% of all drug overdose deaths in the UT. Proposed Services: SWUCHC will add a hybridized Assertive Community Treatment Team. ACT will allow additional outreach to patients in our service area with serious mental illnesses including depression, bipolar, acute suicidality, etc. These patients will be identified through referrals from the local hospitals b-med units, mental health access centers, and emergency rooms and SWUCHC provider teams. ACT team may be used to support our value-based care work as many of our patients who demonstrate high utilization of the emergency room are those with serious mental illness or comorbid chronic health conditions, SUD, and mental health concerns and have struggles accessing traditional primary care and behavioral health services. SWUCHC has not previously reported SUD services on the UDS (other than MOUD) and will add PCP and behavioral health provider and ACT team members to address these needs. ACT services increase the number of patient who receive BH services and SUD services at SWUCHC and will include daily outreach to patients at the right place, assuring they receive the right care, at the right time. SWUCHC provides pharmacy services through the 340B program which support psych, BH, and PCPs administer MOUD and SUD treatment as well as appropriate Behavioral Health Therapy. A Behavioral Health Care Coordinator will also be hired to bring scheduling and patient recall efficiencies to SWUCHC BH integration team including: LCSWs, LMFTs, CSW, CMHC and will also assure patients are appropriately referred to SWUCHC’s ACT team or to other community partners for more intensive BH services. Population Groups to be Served: SWUCHC’s target population is 73,058 residents who are at or below 200% FPG. This comprises 30% of the total population, with 10% Hispanic, 12% uninsured, and 11% at or below 100% FPG. Current data (2023 UDS) shows 43% of patients served are Hispanic, 36% are uninsured and 90% of those reporting incomes are living below 200% FPG. In 2023, over 5,000 patients (31%) reported being best served in a language other than English, and most of SWUCHC’s providers, support staff, and intake staff are fluently bilingual.
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