[Webinar Recording] Pioneering New Territory: Lessons Learned By CCBHCs In The COVID-19 Pandemic

The Certified Community Behavioral Health Center (CCBHC), a model of behavioral healthcare that has taken root nationwide, is valued by providers and clients for its ability to offer wraparound services in a centralized setting. But the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the behavioral health community, including CCBHCs, to adapt in the face of myriad new challenges.

Pioneering New Territory: Lessons Learned by CCBHCs in the COVID-19 Pandemic, a free, on-demand webinar from Qualifacts + Credible, takes an in-depth look at how CCBHCs were affected, the unique challenges they faced and the lessons they learned. This webinar aims to provide you with a basic understanding of how CCBHCs function and how they respond in times of crisis. Even if your organization is not a CCBHC, you will find valuable takeaways applicable to ongoing challenges.

You can read a few highlights from this timely and insightful webinar below, or fill out the form on this page to view the recording.

 Webinar Topics:

• An overview of the CCBHC model
• CCBHC certification criteria
• CCBHCs and COVID-19
• CCBHC state options and opportunities
• Meet New York City’s CASES
• CASES and COVID-19’s challenges
• CASES and lessons learned

Delivery System Trends

• A confluence of forces is changing how behavioral health services are delivered:
• Increasing desire to better address health disparities
• Increasing need for behavioral healthcare due to COVID-19
• Increasing pressure on state budgets due to fallout from the pandemic
• Growing interest in value-based purchasing
• Growing awareness that insufficient access to behavioral health is a big problem

What States Want

States are searching for solutions that:

• Address the high healthcare spend attributable to people with mental illness or substance use disorders
  – Allocate existing dollars more efficiently
  – Engage people in treatment early and keep them from developing poor health outcomes
  – Go beyond episodic crisis response to models that link people in crisis to a full care continuum
  – Acknowledge and address the contributing role of social determinants of health
  – Improve care integration and adequately address physical health conditions among people with behavioral health diagnoses
•  Reduce high levels of unmet need
  – Bring people into care whose needs have long gone unmet
  – Strengthen partnerships and referral relationships across social service systems
  – Build capacity in the behavioral health system to respond to rising community need
• Align with existing state initiatives
  – Alternative payment methods (APMs)
  – Waivers

CCBHCs: A New Model

CCBHCs are built on the concept that the way to expand and improve care is to pay for the activities that make those goals possible. That means:

• Establishing a national definition regarding scope of services, timeliness of access and more
• Standardized data and quality reporting
• A payment rate that covers the real cost of opening access to new patients and new services (this includes non-billable activities like outreach and care coordination)

CCBHCs’ Successes

After two years of operation, CCBHCs have demonstrated successes including:

• Increased hiring and recruitment
• Greater staff satisfaction and retention
• Redesigning care teams
• Improved access to care
• Launch of new service lines to meet community need
• Deploying outreach and chronic health management outside the four walls of the clinic
• Improved partnerships with schools, primary care, law enforcement and hospitals
• Outcome-driven treatment

The CCBHC Model’s Adaptiveness in a Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought numerous challenges for CCBHCs. Here are just three examples of how this model has been able to have an impact on these challenges.

CHALLENGE: Major rise in mental health conditions and substance abuse disorders (SUD) as a result of the pandemic
CCBHC IMPACT: Increased staff capacity to meet increased demand, along with improved access

CHALLENGE: Rapid shift to telehealth technologies in response to social distancing guidelines
CCBHC IMPACT: Financial resources to support telehealth adoption (e.g., equipment, training)

CHALLENGE: Staff furloughs and/or layoffs as revenues drop
CCBHC IMPACT: Encounter-based payment mitigates impact of reduced units of service

For more examples of the CCBHC model’s adaptiveness in a pandemic, as well as information about the lessons learned, please enjoy our free, on-demand webinar by filling out the form on this page.

WEBINAR PRESENTERS:

Program presenters are Rebecca Farley David, senior advisor, Public Policy & Special Initiatives, the National Council for Behavioral Health; Mary Givens, product manager of compliance, Qualifacts + Credible; Billy Green, MPA, CPME, CMOM, director, Practice Operations and Clinic Programs, CASES — The Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services; and Lauren Roygardner, LMSW, Ph.D., evaluation director, CCBHC, CASES.