Community Behavioral Health Clinics Improve Rural Access to Mental Health Services in Kansas
The Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) is a new model for behavioral health service delivery that has been implemented by many community mental health centers in Kansas and across the country. In fact, Kansas was the first state in the nation to require all community mental health centers to adopt the CCBHC model, which focuses on prevention, timely intervention (including crisis services), and care coordination to improve outcomes for individuals with mental health and substance use challenges.
Crawford County Mental Health Center is one of several Kansas CCBHCs to receive funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to implement the model. In 2022, the clinic was awarded a four-year CCBHC grant and contracted CPPR for the grant’s evaluation. As a result of the mental health center’s efforts to enhance crisis intervention and care coordination among local health providers, they received full CCBHC Certification by the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services on October 1, 2024.
“CPPR is the first resource I look to for support and evaluation regarding our efforts to improve care in Crawford County with our CCBHC grant. The lead evaluator has linked our agency to valuable resources in Kansas to help in our efforts,” said Crawford County Mental Health Center Deputy Director Amy Glines. “CPPR has provided essential organization to meet SAMHSA deadlines and expectations. Truly, they have become part of the team.”
Given the high rate of suicide in the county, Crawford County Mental Health Center pursued several evidence-based models like the Zero Suicide Model and has implemented emergency crisis intervention and care services that are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. By their second grant year, the mental health center provided a total of 19,393 unique evidence-based practice services to 2,165 clients, nearly five times more than the number provided in the first grant year.
Additionally, the mental health center developed multiple care coordination agreements with providers of inpatient psychiatric treatment, medical detoxification programs, and residential programs to ensure care coordination and to enable individuals discharged from these facilities to receive appropriate follow-up care and seamlessly transition to community-based services.
CPPR’s initial efforts in Crawford County involved the development of a community needs assessment that offered a deep understanding of local needs for mental and behavioral services and existing capacity to meet those needs. “It has been incredibly rewarding to work with a valued community partner like Crawford County Mental Health Center as they have implemented this care model to meet the community’s behavioral health needs,” said Associate Researcher Senior Chris Tilden, who serves as the lead evaluator for the center’s CCBHC grant. “We have been able to collect, analyze, and visualize key information in a variety of ways to contribute to their efforts. Our work has helped inform multiple initiatives to improve care quality and timeliness of the services they provide to individuals and families in Crawford County.”
At CPPR, we’ve long recognized and believed in the power of community organizations and their ability to be responsive to their communities’ greatest needs. We are proud to support organizations like Crawford County Mental Health Center and to work with them to develop meaningful and actionable information that is informing their efforts to develop and implement comprehensive behavioral health services that are responsive to the needs of their communities.