Fiscal year 2025 expanded hours. - caring health center, INC. (CHC) urgently seeks to further expand operating hours to meet the high demand for unmet care needs in springfield, MA

This expansion focuses on serving the pediatric population and CHC's target pediatric and adult minoritized and marginalized communities, including low-income, black, indigenous, people of color (BIPOC), hispanic, lgbtqia+, and immigrant/refugee populations. By embedding practice transformation principles, CHC aims to enhance patient care delivery and operational efficiency. In 2023, 702 pediatric patients at caring health center (CHC) were diagnosed with mental health or substance use disorders. In response, CHC hired its first pediatric BH provider in may 2024, and since then, they have been managing a caseload of 36 clients. However, with a 14% no-show rate, many patients still lack access to necessary care. Additionally, only 24% of children and 37% of adolescents are up-to-date on immunizations, far below the medicaid accountable care organization (ACO) target of 54%. CHC urgently needs to further expand existing after hour provider hours and scale these models across the agency to address staffing challenges and meet growing demand effectively. The project's goals and objectives are to: (1) expand access to behavioral health (BH) pediatric care; (1.1) increase BH pediatric care operating hours by 10 hours per week, including onsite or onsite evening hours from 5-7PM, monday through friday, to accommodate after-school and work schedules; (1.2) scale and spread the after-hours BH care model to adult BH services based on quality improvement (QI) plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles; (2) increase pediatric immunization rates; (2.1) increase pediatric immunization rates to meet ACO goals of 54.4% for children (currently 24%) and 53.3% for adolescents (currently 37%) by increasing access to after-hours care; (3) test practice transformation strategies at the new medical campus at sumner AVE.; and (3.1) U SE quality improvement (QI) plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles to test practice transformation strategies that facilitate expanded hours of operation responsive to population health needs including implementing a rotating expanded hours team (with advanced practice providers and nurses), to pilot a range of expansion strategies including same-day services. The project aims to serve approximately 25 unique pediatric BH clients throughout the year; approximately 100 children and 100 adolescent immunization clients annually; and, implement at least three distinct QI PDSA program-tested additional expanded hour services as described herein.