Mental Health Partners’ Journey to Becoming a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC)
In the fall of 2018, Mental Health Partners (MHP) was been awarded a two-year, $4-milion dollar demonstration grant by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to continue to work toward becoming a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC), the “gold standard” in the delivery of mental health and addiction recovery care. MHP is the first mental health center in Colorado, and only 1 of 52 in the nation, to receive this prestigious award.
The award was a significant step in MHP’s vision to rely on health outcomes, population health management and a multi-disciplinary, team-based approach to transform the delivery of high-quality mental health and addiction recovery services to our communities. This grant recognized the time, energy and hard work MHP staff put into implementing the building blocks of this vision, which includes the creation of our Integrated Health Home (IHH) and implementing a Behavioral Health Home (BHH) model, and that we are leaders in this field.
During the first year of the grant, MHP developed a strategy to meet certification requirements in six criteria domains. In addition, this grant helps MHP focus on reducing disparities in healthcare access and outcomes for three, key underserved subpopulations (Hispanic individuals, individuals experiencing homelessness, and members of the Armed Forces and Veterans and their families) by meeting six, main criteria areas: staffing; access; care coordination; scope of services; quality and other reporting; and organizational authority, governance and accreditation.
Highlights of the strategy that were developed include:
- Increased training in identified evidence-based practices, suicide prevention and intervention models, cultural responsivity
- Enhanced addiction treatment credentialing
- A Community Health Worker program to outreach to military/veteran-serving organizations and the Hispanic/Latinx communities, with an emphasis on persons among these two populations who experience homelessness
In July 2019, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) completed its review of MHP’s attestation submission and found sufficient evidence MHP is meeting the required criteria for the grant.
“MHP clinicians and support staff are dedicated to our mission to provide high-quality, expert mental health and addiction recovery care to everyone who walks through our doors,” said Toni Moon, Director of Population Health Management and CCBHC Implementation Team Lead. “This positive review by SAMHSA confirms this commitment and MHP’s continued journey to enhancing the quality of our Behavioral Health Home model by supporting best practices in care coordination and population health management.”
MHP is now hiring seven Community Health Workers, four for Boulder County and three for Broomfield County, to support the full Community Health Worker program launch in January 2020. The individuals in these roles are trusted members of their community and usually share ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status and life experiences with the community they are serving. For more information and to apply for these positions, please visit: www.mhpcolorado.org/about/careers.