Behavioral health mobile crisis team partnerships, expansion project - the flathead city-county health department (fcchd), through its behavioral health division, proposes the flathead county…

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration awarded $452,866 to Flathead County on September 30, 2026, under the Center for Mental Health Services Projects of Regional and National Significance program (CFDA 93.532) to expand behavioral health mobile crisis response services in Flathead County, Montana.

Flathead County will expand its existing Crisis Assistance Team (CAT) program from a 12-hour daily operation into a 24/7/365 face-to-face behavioral health practitioner-only mobile crisis infrastructure. The funding will support workforce scale-up over a multi-year period to eliminate the critical 12-hour nightly service gap that currently shifts behavioral health crises entirely to law enforcement, emergency medical services, and the local emergency department. Concurrently, the grant will fund a new daytime Community Outreach Team to conduct mobile care coordination, physical health integration, and real-time telepsychiatry linkage for high-utilizer populations at unhoused shelters and the county detention center. Flathead County faces severe behavioral health risk factors, with a five-year aggregate suicide rate of 26.4 deaths per 100,000 residents, nearly double the national average, concentrated in a sprawling rural jurisdiction where more than half of 111,814 residents live in geographically isolated communities.

Performance occurs in Kalispell, Montana. The period of performance runs through September 29, 2030.

Behavioral health mobile crisis team partnerships, expansion project - the flathead city-county health department (fcchd), through its behavioral health division, proposes the flathead county behavioral health mobile crisis team partnerships (mctp) project to expand the mobile crisis response services in flathead county. Flathead county is a sprawling frontier and rural jurisdiction where more than half of the 111,814 residents live in geographically isolated communities. The region exhibits severe risk factors for behavioral health mortality, highlighted by a five-year aggregate suicide rate of 26.4 deaths per 100,000 residents, nearly double the national average, and a high concentration of substance use challenges. Currently, the health department operates the crisis assistance team (CAT), which provides mobile crisis response services for flathead county. IT is structurally restricted to a 12-hour-per-day service window. This limitation leaves a critical 12-hour nightly blind spot that shifts the entire burden of behavioral health crises onto law enforcement, emergency medical services, and the local emergency department. To eliminate this systemic GAP, this project will execute a structured, multi-year workforce scale-up to transition the CAT program into a comprehensive, 24/7/365 face-to-face behavioral health practitioner-only (BHP-only) mobile crisis infrastructure. Concurrently, the grant will fund the implementation of a new, daytime community outreach team (COT) to conduct mobile care coordination, physical health integration, and real-time telepsychiatry linkage for high-utilizer populations at unhoused shelters and the county detention center. Project goals • goal 1: establish a 24/7/365 BHP-only mobile crisis infrastructure. Expand existing personnel to deliver uninterrupted, face-to-face behavioral health field responses. • goal 2: formalize multi-system triage, dispatch, and clinical partnerships. Embed unified field workflows with public safety and healthcare anchors. • goal 3: operationalize the daytime community outreach team (COT). Break the local multiple-utilizer cycle through proactive mobile care. Strategies and interventions the project leverages an established local collaborative footprint to expand evidence-based practices (ebps), including trauma-informed care (TIC), intensive case management, and stanley-brown safety planning. All crisis screenings and tracking will follow validated, scientific structures, including the columbia-suicide severity rating scale (c-ssrs) and the suicide assessment five-step evaluation and triage (safe-t) matrix. Led by a 0.50 FTE project director and a 0.25 FTE project evaluator, the program will utilize direct query links into the health department's electronic health record (EHR) and automated loops with 911 dispatch data to run a data-driven continuous quality improvement (CQI) process. Over the 4-year lifecycle, the project will maximize medicaid billing workflows and present empirical diversion metrics to local leaders to integrate the expanded infrastructure into the permanent county budget, ensuring long-term sustainability.