| The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is launching the "Improving Behavioral Health Follow-up Care Learning Collaborative" to support state Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) agencies' efforts to improve access to, and coordination of, follow-up care for beneficiaries who visit an emergency department or are hospitalized for a mental health or substance use condition. Although timely follow-up care for this population leads to decreased suicidal ideation, reduced readmissions, improved medication adherence and decreased costs, states often fall short of the recommended timeframes for post-discharge treatment. Additionally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, delivery of behavioral health services declined dramatically and remains well below previous years' levels. Through the Learning Collaborative, state Medicaid and CHIP agencies and their partners including state behavioral health agencies, managed care plans and providers, will learn about evidence-based interventions to improve access to timely follow-up behavioral health care during the pandemic recovery period and beyond. The Learning Collaborative includes a four-part webinar series beginning in May 2021 and an affinity group beginning in July 2021. The webinar series will include presentations on strategies to expand and ensure access to follow-up care through sufficient provider networks, effective use of data, and strong collaboration with managed care plans, health systems and other partners. States interested in taking action on the concepts and strategies introduced through the webinar series will have the opportunity to participate in an action-oriented affinity group that will facilitate state-to-state learning and support state teams in designing, implementing, and scaling-up quality improvement (QI) projects in their state. The first webinar, "Expanding and Ensuring Access to Behavioral Health Follow-up Care," will be held on May 17, 2021 at 3:00 PM ET. Presenters from state Medicaid agencies will describe their initiatives to improve the availability of follow-up care and discuss how Health Home programs can be a strategy to increase access to coordinated behavioral health care. Register for the webinars here. For details on the rest of the webinar series and the affinity group, please visit: Improving Behavioral Health Follow-up Care Learning Collaborative. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment