At Fourfront Contributor, advocating for statewide adoption of the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) model has been one of our top priorities for years. We believe the model represents a long-term solution for building a more effective and sustainable community behavioral health system in Washington state.
On January 8, 2025, SAMHSA awarded our state a $1 million CCBHC Medicaid Demonstration Program planning grant, unlocking essential funding to support the implementation of this transformative model. The gears are turning at the systemic level – so how are providers ensuring they will be CCBHC-ready?
Our member CEOs addressed that question and more at the WA State of Reform Health Policy Conference on January 9. During a panel discussion on CCBHCs, Tom Sebastian, CEO of Compass Health, and Katrina Egner, CEO of Sound, joined Wendy Sisk, CEO of Peninsula Behavioral Health, and Joan Miller, CEO of the Washington Council for Behavioral Health, to help illuminate the challenges facing our behavioral health landscape – and the opportunities ahead.
As providers, we’re squarely focused on CCBHC readiness, ensuring our people, processes and platforms are on track to meet requirements for certification.
There are multiple paths to becoming CCBHC-ready. For Washington state’s 12 CCBHC demonstration grant recipients – agencies that have received time-limited grants to implement projects and capture data on how they impact client care – some of that path has already been paved.
For example, CCBHC funding has enabled Comprehensive Healthcare to:
- Significantly improve its same-day access to care. In Walla Walla, clients screened for services receive an intake within two days – most on the same day – with 90% completing the assessment process. Part of this success comes from adding key staff positions vital to supporting same-day access.
- Expand whole person care by opening a walk-in clinic in Yakima that offers clients a convenient one-stop shop for accessing behavioral healthcare services and primary healthcare services.
- Decrease no-show rates while increasing service encounter rates by 88%.
- Explore technology and infrastructure upgrades, including the use of AI, to streamline processes and enable team members to focus on client care, not administrative tasks.
While Sound is still in the early stages of implementing its CCBHC grants, it has:
- Completed three community needs assessments to identify services gaps and opportunities.
- Added key staff positions to improve access to care, including Behavioral Healthcare Navigators who play an integral role in streamlining the intake process.
- Increased the number of clients served across its three CCBHC clinics. The agency set a first-year goal of serving 850 clients at its Capitol Hill clinic – and surpassed (and nearly doubled) that number, serving 1,588 individuals.
Many organizations that haven’t participated in the demonstration program have been taking steps to build the necessary infrastructure, processes, and partnerships to meet CCBHC criteria.
At Compass Health, CCBHC readiness is its No. 1 strategic priority. The organization has already made strides in:
- Launching its Broadway Campus Redevelopment, a major capital project to redevelop an entire city block in Everett.
- Implementing technology infrastructure and launching same-day appointments as an early adopter.
- Offering outpatient care coordination, which research shows is instrumental in supporting strong client outcomes.
- Conducting community needs assessments to guide staffing, training, and service delivery.
Frontier Behavioral Health’s journey to becoming CCBHC-ready includes:
- Upgrading its electronic health record (EHR) system to enhance their reporting capabilities, and implementing other tools, including AI interfaces, to ensure they’re able to meet CCBHC data reporting requirements.
- Expanding their partnership with their local FQHC, CHAS Health, to seamlessly integrate primary care and behavioral health services for the community members served by both organizations.
- Launching a capital project in partnership with CHAS Health to open a shared clinic that would take care integration to the next level.
- Launching an innovative outpatient care model that expands access to care by creating new professional pathways for bachelor’s-level graduates aspiring to work in community behavioral health.
Providers can’t do this alone. We will need to work together, with the support of the Washington Council and – importantly – with funding and policy support from state lawmakers and the HCA.
What does success look like?
As we discussed at the conference, CCBHC readiness will look different for every provider. But there are several overarching components, inherent to the CCBHC model, that we’re all working toward:
- Access to care – ensuring timely access to services, including same-day access and 24/7 crisis services.
- Comprehensive service delivery – offering a full range of mental health and substance use disorder services.
- Care coordination – establishing strong partnerships with hospitals, primary care providers, law enforcement, schools, and other-community based services to provide integrated and coordinated care.
- Staffing and workforce development – hiring and training multidisciplinary teams that include psychiatrists, therapists, case managers, peer support specialists, nurses, etc.
- Data collection and reporting – establishing robust systems for data management, reporting, and demonstrating outcomes.
CCBHC provides a systemic solution to address deep-rooted challenges within our behavioral health system so that we can keep pace with growing needs for mental health and substance use disorder treatment. CCBHC holds significant promise for our state, and our organizations are eager to realize its full impact. To learn more about CCBHCs, click here.