Thursday, April 3, 2025
4/3/2025
FY 2024 Behavioral Health Service Expansion - Thrive Alabama (TA) seeks to integrate and expand existing behavioral health services (mental health counseling and SUD services including MOUD) via access in adult and pediatric primary care through a multi-phased plan. Expansion of mental health services will involve increasing available counseling services by co-locating counselors into the adult and pediatric primary care teams to provide screening and assessment, short-term counseling, and referral as needed. Expansion of SUD services will involve building upon existing SUD services by adding 1) a behavioral health professional who can provide SUD services within the primary care environment, 2) MOUD treatment (initially through contracts with local providers), (2) training TA providers to implement MOUD treatment and management.. The overall goal for this project is to increase patients’ access to mental health and substance use treatment, including access to MOUDs. Currently, TA’s behavioral health (BH) care department is in a physically separate location from the adult primary care and pediatric health care locations. Existing BH services are for adults only, primarily grant-funded (SAMHSA, VOCA, Ryan White) and limited to underserved populations with or at high-risk for HIV and/or survivors of violent crime. Our BH department specializes in trauma-informed culturally competent care. Counseling services include a VOCA-funded trauma recovery program that provides individual and group therapy, and an intensive SUD/COD outpatient program called the Den for people at-risk for HIV who are racial/ethnic minorities or members of the LGBTQ+ community. Eligible individuals have access to BH’s contracted psychiatrist. With co-located behavioral health professionals (BHP) embedded with primary care providers (PCP) on site, patients will benefit from having immediate access to counseling, whether they need one session or multiple sessions. Based on screening and assessment, as part of the PCP team , the BHPs will provide brief interventions and collaborate with the clinical staff and PMC social workers, who will follow up on referrals for patients in need of further counseling and SUD treatment. Co-location offers the added advantage of crisis intervention by a BHP, if needed. Co-location also will help mitigate the issue of lengthy wait times for BH services, especially for low-income patients who are on Medicaid, uninsured, or underinsured. Many mental health providers do not accept Medicaid or uninsured patients; these patients rely upon state or federal programs at community-based organizations, which often have long wait times due to understaffing. The wait time for pediatric counseling can be as long as nine months. During Phase 1, TA will initiate BH integration into our adult primary care with 1 FTE BHP, create provider training opportunities, and develop supporting infrastructure, protocols, and procedures. Activities will include: • Use of evidence-based practices to develop new BH protocols and processes as needed. • Adaptation of current procedures (e.g., screening, referral, EHR documentation, treatment planning) to facilitate BH integration. • Development of policies and procedures for integrative BH services. • Creation of job descriptions, appropriate training, and onboarding procedures for staff funded by this grant. • Recruitment, hiring, onboarding, and training of full-time project staff (the first BHPs for adult primary care and one BHP for pediatrics) • Identification of providers, development of contracts and hiring of provider(s) for MOUD. • Provision of integrated mental health counseling and SUD services. In Phase 2, TA will hire an additional BHP to co-locate and embed with the adult primary care team and develop and implement MOUD training for TA providers..
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).