A Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic model is designed to ensure access to coordinated comprehensive behavioral health care. CCBHCs are required to serve anyone who requests care for mental health or substance use, regardless of their ability to pay, place of residence, or age – including developmentally appropriate care for children and youth.
CCBHCs must meet standards for the range of services they provide and they are required to get people into care quickly. An important feature of the CCBHC model is that it requires crisis services that are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. CCBHCs are required to provide a comprehensive array of behavioral health services so that people who need care are not caught trying to piece together the behavioral health support they need across multiple providers. In addition, CCBHCs must provide care coordination to help people navigate behavioral health care, physical health care, social services, and the other systems they are involved in.
CCBHCs can be supported through the CCBHC Medicaid Demonstration, through SAMHSA administered CCBHC Expansion (CCBHC-E) Grants, or through independent state programs.
Download a PDF of Mary’s CCBHC presentation from the NAMI conference here.
Find out more here Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) | SAMHSA
Follow These talking points in reference to CCBHCs:
- CCBHCs are the medical home for the seriously mentally ill/seriously emotionally disturbed population with behavioral health as the core competency.
- CCBHCs are not bricks and mortar like community health centers but use existing services in the community and create access, improving client outcomes and experience.
- Services offered by the CCBHC are determined by the state creating a standardized platform of quality care and data.
- CCBHCs can alleviate overcrowding and legal issues at Montana State Hospital with greater community-based access to mental health services.
- CCBHCs partner with existing organizations like crisis response teams, 988 call centers, children’s facilities, substance abuse treatment centers and create efficiencies and save money.
- In other states, CCBHCs have saved millions of dollars in diverting care away from hospital emergency rooms and jails and into the community-based mental health and substance use treatment where it belongs.
- CCBHCs offer great quality with tracked outcomes by the state, which has not traditionally been done, to ensure that state dollars are being well spent.
