FY 2024 Behavioral Health Service Expansion - Expanding Access to Behavioral Health and Substance Use Disorder Treatment in Central Georgia First Choice Primary Care proposes to increase its capacity to provide needed behavioral health services and initiate a program offering medically assisted treatment to residents of our service area. We will work in collaboration with an existing MAT provider, River Edge Behavioral Health Services. River Edge and First Choice have a long standing collaborative partnership, and we will leverage their experience to reach a broader segment of the community, addressing unmet need in a comprehensive fashion. Funding from this opportunity will be used to hire a family medicine provider with an interest in MAT. That FM physician will devote two days per week to the MOUD program, and as the program grows that time commitment may increase. Funding will also support an additional part time psychiatric nurse practitioner, and increase the contractual time for a psychiatrist to supervise that NP. We will hire an additional LCSW and a substance use disorder counselor to provide supportive services, including groups. We will also add 1.0 FTE of a registered nurse who will manage the MOUD program day to day. The initial services will be provided at our largest clinical site in downtown Macon, and in year 2 we will add services in our Warner Robins office, which will extend services to another county in our service area. The two counties in which we currently operate are surrounded by smaller rural counties that are not able to offer many behavioral health services, so we anticipate our program will be able to reach residents of these counties as well. Year 2 expansion to Warner Robins (Houston County) will require additional nurse practitioner time, as well as another part time counselor. We operate pharmacies in both locations that will assist in managing the necessary medications in a safe and compliant fashion.
