FY 2024 Behavioral Health Service Expansion - Service Area ID: 504, Clallam County Washington State 6th Congressional District Current Funding: HRSA 330 Service Area Competition Grant Number H80CS28357 Section 330 BHSE Funding Requested: $600,000 1st year & $500,000 2nd year North Olympic Healthcare Network (NOHN) has delivered high-quality primary care services since 1979 and has been a HRSA-funded FQHC since 2015. Based in Port Angeles, Washington, NOHN operates three clinical sites and serves the whole of Clallam County as the county’s only full-scope FQHC, providing primary medical, behavioral, dental, vision, and pharmacy services to this historically underserved area. Clallam County is a rural and isolated region and suffers from a high prevalence of behavioral health disorders, with suicide rates higher than state and national averages. Similarly, there is high prevalence of substance use disorders, particularly opioid use disorder, with rates of overdose and overdose-related death among the highest in Washington State. Many community members suffering from these conditions also have difficulty accessing mental health, substance use disorder, and primary care services. Their ability to meaningfully engage in healthcare is often compromised by social determinants of health such as housing and food insecurity, under-employment, and lack of access to transportation. NOHN has developed robust programs to meet patients’ mental health and substance use disorder treatment needs. At present, health center patients are able to access mental health professionals at one of NOHN’s three clinic locations. Patients may receive short-term outpatient counseling as well as psychiatric medication management. Also, NOHN was among the first to offer office-based medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) to this community to address the opioid crisis and currently employs more than 20 primary care providers, a family physician dually board certified as an Addiction Medicine Physician, and two registered nurses who hold the Addictions Nursing Certification. NOHN is well-positioned to expand current programming and create new programming to be further responsive to the incredible mental health and substance use disorder needs of our community. We are currently seeking Behavioral Health Services Expansion (BHSE) funding to support that effort. We propose to use BHSE funding to significantly expand our behavioral health workforce. Doing so will support several patient-centered initiatives. One, we intend to increase the presence of behavioral health providers at each of our clinic sites by creating a new role for “integrated” behavioral health consultants (BHC). Having a BHC at our various sites will ease the transportation burden on patients, enable warm hand-offs between disciplines, and facilitate implementation of universal screening for social determinants of health, common psychiatric conditions, and SUD (using SBIRT; screening, brief intervention, referral to treatment). Two, an expanded behavioral health workforce will enable NOHN to offer increasingly individualized treatment plans such that another option could be made available for patients dealing with mental health and SUD problems for whom the short-term counseling model proves insufficient. Finally, we propose using BHSE funding to create a new case-management position focused specifically on supporting patients with behavioral health concerns to address SDOH and fully, meaningfully engage in primary medical, mental health and SUD care, including MOUD. By dedicating staff to screening efforts, offering a wider range of counseling services, and adding a case manager to our clinic, it is expected that we will see a significant increase in the number of patients accessing mental health, SUD, and MOUD services in the coming years.
