New Mental Health Initiatives Attempt to Address Workforce Shortages

Proposed legislation hopes to add 400 Medicare-funded psychiatric residency positions.

While President Biden may have declared an end to the Covid pandemic, the effects it had on the healthcare system are most certainly going to linger on a bit longer. 

One of the hardest hit areas during the last few years was mental and behavioral health, something we’ve talked about before.  While the need for these services increased during the pandemic, actual use is another story: usage of these services has dropped steeply during the first months of quarantine and has been one of the slowest healthcare areas to recover. 

The good news, however, is that it’s also an area seeing some of the most significant progress as the pandemic era draws to a close.

As reported by Tiffany Ferguson and others during recent episodes on Monitor Monday, the rollout of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline was one of the biggest stories of the summer.  A recent report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shows that it’s working and working well! Data reveals a 45 percent increase in contacts during the first full month since the rollout compared to the same time period in 2021, which translates to over 150,000 more potentially lifesaving calls, chats, and texts.  Response time has dropped from more than two minutes to just 42 seconds with the new hotline as well. 

Considering this success, HHS also announced a $35 million grant opportunity to extend the reach of the 988 hotline to tribal communities, which often face issues accessing the technology necessary to interact with such crisis services. 

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra noted that the 988 hotline is just one of many ways the administration intends to transform the mental healthcare system, and the agency added another one of these ways to its list when it approved for Oregon what it hopes to be the first amongst many Medicaid State Plan amendments addressing mental healthcare.

Oregon’s newly approved proposal is a first-of-its-kind Medicaid-supported mobile crisis intervention program.  This program will provide immediate assessment, stabilization, and de-escalation assistance for recipients, connecting them with a behavioral health specialist 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including holidays. It is intended to treat mental and behavioral health conditions, as well as substance use disorders, including opioid use. It will also help coordinate referrals for any other necessary social services.  The hope is that this will decrease the need for expensive and extensive inpatient services when that might not be even the best course of treatment. 

While Oregon may be the first state to seek and receive approval for its new Medicaid State plan amendment, HHS has strongly encouraged other states to develop similar programs, providing 20 additional state Medicaid agencies with $15 million in planning grants to do so.

Both initiatives, however, are dependent on having enough providers on the other end of the phone, so to speak. And workforce shortages in the field is a pre-pandemic issue that only worsened during the last few years.  The Biden administration has certainly consistently signaled its commitment to addressing this, but it isn’t alone in its efforts.

The Senate Finance Committee is also considering multiple pieces of legislation aimed at helping this shortage now and going forward.  Currently in its draft stages, the “Behavioral Health Workforce of the Future Act” hopes to shore up the mental and behavioral health workforce by adding 400 Medicare-funded psychiatric residency positions, expanding Medicare’s Health Professional Shortage Area bonus program that provides incentives to those serving in designated areas, requiring new Medicaid guidance to states on how to increase their mental health workforce, and providing new options to hospitals on addressing worker burnout. 

With strong bipartisan support, the future of this particular act looks fairly bright.