FY 2024 behavioral health service expansion - tiburcio vasquez health center (TVHC) delivers health and wellness services to impoverished, uninsured, immigrant, and vulnerable families in central…

FY 2024 behavioral health service expansion - tiburcio vasquez health center (TVHC) delivers health and wellness services to impoverished, uninsured, immigrant, and vulnerable families in central and southern alameda county, california. In 2023, we served over 29,000 patients. 96% of our patients live at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, with 72% identifying as latinx and 60% requiring assistance in a language other than english. We provided mental health services to 1,405 patients through 4,894 virtual visits and 1,087 clinic visits last year and have had a consistent waiting list since before the pandemic. As of may 2024, we currently have a waiting list of 250 patients for therapy and receive 200-300 new referrals monthly for therapy and psychiatry, with the majority of those waiting for behavioral health services being spanish speaking patients. TVHC is dedicated to expanding our behavioral health and substance use services to reach and serve more patients by building on our integrated care model, which provides behavioral health services alongside primary care. We plan to achieve this by increasing our staff capacity, including adding another associate clinical social worker (ASW) to provide assessment, diagnosis, therapy, treatment plans, and progress monitoring, a nurse practitioner to provide comprehensive, patient-centered care that addresses both physical and mental health needs, champion and perform routine mental health screenings, and conduct assessments, and care coordinators/community health workers (CHWS) to support patients with internal and external resource coordination. The expansion of the team will also play a crucial role in addressing substance use disorders (SUD) by providing routine screenings during primary care visits, assessments, referrals and warm hand-offs to treatment providers and mat, health education, and motivational interviewing techniques to encourage patients to seek treatment and make positive changes. Additional services may include harm reduction services, like distributing naloxone kits in our clinics or in our street health outreach programs and developing community health education to raise awareness within our current prevention and intervention programs and youth health services department which can lead to increased connection and SUD treatment. Additionally, funding will support TVHC I.T. And quality improvement staff to accurately collect and analyze data on mental health and substance use disorder needs and services and develop better plans to address, capture, and report on patient and community behavioral health needs.