FY 2024 Behavioral Health Service Expansion - Oak Orchard Community Health Center, Inc. (OOH) will add mobile and bilingual mental health and substance use services that serve patients in Orleans, Wyoming, Steuben, and Genesee Counties. Based on the Community Needs Assessment for our service area, Mental Health Services are significantly needed, and there are no direct services for Mental Health or SUD in our area that are currently provided to the migrant and seasonal farmworker population. We plan to address the need by hiring a bilingual Care Manager/Therapist who will go to the farm locations of rural migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the Genesee and Wyoming County region for screenings and behavioral health outreach using the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) model. Our care managers then provide brief interventions to help connect patients to specialty substance treatment programs. While it does not diagnose, it can signal use and the need for help. These models screen and treat for active substance use and the risk of future substance use so that it may be mitigated through behavioral therapy before it starts. Migrant workers often do not have the resources (transportation, daycare) or opportunity (time off) to make appointments for mental health or substance use disorder (SUD), including medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) treatment visits at the clinic. They may fear there will be no one to understand their language, and they will not get the service needed. Studies have proven that language and cultural barriers can cause misinterpretation of a patient’s symptoms or ability to talk about them. These barriers must be removed to provide our patients with the safest environment and best treatment options. This program will eliminate those barriers by providing services on-site where they are, and with someone who speaks their language fluently. OOH has an Opioid Stewardship Director, who has more than five years’ experience with the treatment of SUD. Along with the director we have a Committee that will be focused on the expansion of providing access to MOUD services to our patients. All of our sites will provide MAT. With the screening in place, our providers who are trained in SUD and MOUD will prescribe and a seamless handoff will occur. We also have collaborative relationships with our local opioid treatment providers. In addition to this direct, in-the-field service, OOH will extend the hours of access and availability of our behavioral health services across the OOH system and hire additional Behavioral health staff to support this expansion. New staff includes a psychiatrist, therapists, care managers, community health workers, and other direct support staff. The additional hours will allow patients who have daytime conflicts to pursue treatment without the added stressor of trying to do so during daytime working hours. To do this, we must complete some minor restructuring of our offices to accommodate new staff and hire the staff needed to be available for those appointments. These new methods of outreach and availability help provide equitable solutions for barriers to healthcare access in our community. They will increase the number of mental health and substance use treatment patients by reaching those we haven’t been able to reach in the past in ways that make it easier to screen and connect to treatment. We expect to see more than 3,000 new visits per year once fully operational in behavioral health and substance use through the use of MOUD and serve an additional 1,000 new patients. The addition of extended hours across the system will allow for patient number growth and/or reduced no-show appointments in every community we serve. We anticipate that compliance with doctor recommendations and visits will be easier to achieve, and that will be reflected in more successful outcomes.
