FY 2024 behavioral health service expansion - christ community health services augusta (CCH) serves nearly 10,000 unique patients in the central savannah river area in georgia and south carolina

CCH has a 17-year track record of providing accessible, affordable, and excellent healthcare to the underserved populations through primary care, dentistry, and recently behavioral health services. CCH provides behavioral health services as both mental health services and substance use disorder (SUD) services within the context of integrated primary care. Our community has identified the need for additional mental health resources as a top priority through local needs assessments and priority responses for both community initiatives and hospital resources. With georgia ranked as 49 out of 51 states in terms of least access to mental health providers, and a behavioral health provider shortage area (hpsa) score of 20 out of 26, richmond county, georgia is in need of additional resources to address mental health needs. In particular, richmond county faces a dire need for treatment of substance use disorders (SUD), with one of the highest per capita rates of opioid use disorder overdose deaths and emergency department visits in the state of georgia and exceeding national averages. CCH has provided mental health services through a small behavioral health staff and some SUD treatment using medications for opioid use disorder (moud) by primary care providers to less than 30 patients per year. In response to these critical needs, CCH proposes to expand behavioral health (BH) services by adding new behavioral health providers, ensuring that each clinic location has one full-time equivalent (1.0 FTE) provider with three focused on adult patients and one focused on pediatrics and adolescents. Additionally, we will recruit a behavioral health care coordinator (bhcc) to 1) facilitate the tracking and follow-up of treatment for patients who have been diagnosed with a SUD but have not been seen in the last year and 2) coordinate care for patients receiving moud. While CCH has mental health services, 0 patients have been reported as receiving SUD services on the UDS in 2023. We are projecting that with the funds offered by this grant, CCH will be able to see 2,040 total behavioral health patients 1,836 seen for mental health and 204 for SUD services. Additionally, CCH will increase the number of moud patients from 29 to 75. In addition to the new staff, CCH will train current staff on integrated care models to improve BH screening rates and referrals to the new behavioral health providers. Training will also address social drivers of health such as homelessness, food insecurity, lack of access to transportation, inability to afford health care, and their impact on mental health. CCH will also train nurse care managers in mental health first aid to provide a first line of defense for patients who are currently receiving ancillary support services, but have not fully engaged with the behavioral health team. CCH will integrate these behavioral health patient outcomes into our existing quality improvement and quality assurance (QI/QA) methods. Our proven QI/QA framework has been instrumental in achieving nationally recognized standards for quality of care and will be pivotal in ensuring the success of this expansion. By enhancing our behavioral health services, CCH aims to address the urgent mental health and SUD needs in our community, improving patient outcomes and continuing our mission of providing exceptional care to those who need IT most.