Local and state mental health officials shared the successes to date on the statewide Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers that serve every Kansas county.
Labette Center for Mental Health Services in Parsons obtained permanent certification a year ago and had provisional certification the year before that.
Matt Atteberry, executive director of LCMHS, shared numbers on people served through the enhanced designation at a town-hall style meeting Tuesday night at the Carnegie Arts Center in Parsons. The executive director and associate director of the Association of Community Mental Health Centers of Kansas (Kyle Kessler and Michelle Ponce, respectively) also spoke.
The CCBHC model gives Labette Center the tools needed to support a range of mental health and substance use treatment services, provides expanded care and improves access to crisis services and coordinated care. The certification was the end of a threeyear process at LCMHS.
CCBHCs add assertive community treatment, medically assisted treatment for opioid addictions, a range of services to service members, veterans and their family, a robust supported employment program to assist individuals in achieving employment and educational goals, increased crisis services, patient navigators, peer support specialists and care coordination between the clinic and other providers, such as primary care.
CCBHCs are required to show adherence to evidence- based practices, track outcomes of those served, have a quality improvement process, an advisory committee that includes community members, according to a previous release from the Labette Center.
Atteberry said since CCBHC certification last year, Labette Center has served 2,866 unique clients, most of them from Labette County. The center also has improved its screening for addiction, depression and chronic health conditions. The certification requires LCMHS to integrate behavioral and primary care for those it serves and to document the care provided.
Labette Center has also improved access to mental health services and is now able to see new clients on the same day.
In 2020, the average wait time to start services was three days, “which I thought was extraordinary,” Atteberry said.
In 1991, when he was a therapist in Parsons, his new clients had a three-month wait for therapy appointments.
Today, with the CCHBC designation, the median wait time to see someone is 15 minutes.
“It’s true,” he said. That doesn’t mean the client can see a psychiatrist in that time frame, but it does mean they can see a qualified mental health professional and get assessed.
Community partnerships make the program work, including with the Veterans Administration to coordinate veteran care.
“This is a big, big deal,” Atteberry said. He said veteran care is one of the focuses of CCBHCs nationally.
Atteberry said the supported employment program has helped 152 unique clients and 102 of them were placed in jobs.
“I’m just gob smacked by that,” he said. He added that from January through June this year, Labette Center offered 264 crisis services to 188 people. Of those, 79% had services delivered during regular hours and 21% received them on holidays and weekends. The vast majority, 88%, received these crisis services in person and 22% received them via telehealth connectivity.
See TOWN HALL, Page 5.
He said Labette Center also participates in a behavioral health court in Labette County District Court and an 11th Judicial District (Crawford, Cherokee and Labette counties) recovery court for those with addictions.
Kessler said partnerships are key for the 26 community mental health centers that are CCHBCs and serve all 105 Kansas counties. State lawmakers are key partners in getting legislation passed after seeing the need, he said. Two state representatives, Dan Goddard of Parsons and Doug Blex of Independence, attended Tuesday’s town hall.
He said suicide numbers nationally were a driver to modernize the mental health care system about eight years ago. In 2017, the second leading cause of death for those aged 9 to 44 in the country was suicide, Kessler said. Accidental deaths, most of them by vehicle accident, were the leading cause.
“Suicide is something that we can invest in, and we know that we can help reduce those numbers,” Kessler said. Mental health interventions moved into schools as professionals worked on implementing the CCBHC model. Kansas also joined those using the national crisis hotline, 988.
State hospitals, including Osawatomie State Hospital, are seeing reduced wait times for a bed to below 40 days for the first time in a month. Mental health centers are gatekeepers for screening to determine if someone needs to be committed to a state hospital, he said. A new mental health facility will open in Wichita in early 2027.
Ponce shared more information about the CCBHC model and the expanded services offered. She said the state of Kansas boosted its investment in mental health care by 40% and this has impacted the delivery of care.
“We are now seeing a 75% increase in access to care. That’s a really outstanding return on investment,” Ponce said.
Mental health centers see clients regardless of their ability to pay. She said CCBHCs get a higher reimbursement rate for serving those on Medicaid.
“This has been a very significant investment made by the state of Kansas. Significant,” Ponce said.
After starting the move toward CCHBCs, Ponce said there are over 500 CCBHCs operational nationally in 46 states, the District of Columbia and in Puerto Rico.
In 2021, the Kansas Legislature passed a law requiring the state to implement the CCBHC model of care, becoming the first state to make this the solution to the mental health and substance abuse care. The CCBHC model existed in other states as part of a federal demonstration program, but Kansas was the first to codify it.
“It’s not often that we get to celebrate being the first state in the nation, but here we are,” Ponce said.
Kansas is one of three states that have the CCBHC model as a statewide system. The others are Missouri and Texas.
She said within the last two months, all 26 licensed community health centers in Kansas became fully certified in the model, which moves beyond just mental health care and includes all health needs, from employment to managing chronic medical conditions.
“You have to now ensure … that those needs are met. You have to follow up,” she said.
She also reviewed requirements for a CCBHC, including its governing board and community partnerships.
Kansas has a comprehensive crisis response system with a goal of making contact with those in crisis within two hours. This could mean having a case manager meet the client at home or in the emergency room, she said.
Mental health centers in Kansas are better at recruiting and retaining staff for the CCBHCs (including case managers, counselors, social workers, nurses and APRNs) and hope to make further improvements.
The efforts have increased awareness in citizens. Polling shows that in 2019 47% of those polled in Kansas said they knew someone with a mental health issue. As of about three months ago, polling showed that number increasing to 73%, Kessler said.
During a brief question period, a Labette County Jail Administrator Brian Harlow asked about interventions in jails to help reduce recidivism rates in inmates after they return to society.
Attendees heard about a program in Montgomery County, funded early on by the county’s share of settlement money from national opioid lawsuits. Kansas will receive at least $340 million over 18 years from the national suits to hold drug companies accountable for the opioid crisis. Some of these funds are shared with counties.
Montgomery County placed a support team of professionals in the jail in Independence, a therapist, case manager and a care coordinator, to meet with inmates and help them get driver’s licenses, birth certificates and therapy to support them for their eventual discharge from jail.
Once discharged, there was 100% participation in continued therapy and interventions for the first three months by discharged inmates who received in-jail services. Many didn’t reoffend once released.
Steve Denny, social worker for Four County Mental Health in Independence, said that when someone left jail before the program that many returned to jail within three months.
“We see people that we used to see all the time not go back there,” Denny said.
Four County Mental Health Center is lobbying to maintain this program.
Kessler said a meeting with the Kansas Attorney General’s Office may be in order to try to replicate a successful program.
