The Various Financing Options for Behavioral Health Services

Behavioral Health Services are some of the latest beneficiaries of reimbursement from Medicaid, which is acting under instructions from the Program Information Notice by the Health Resources and Services Administration. All nursing practitioners, physicians, physician assistants, clinical social workers and clinical psychologists, as well as Federally Qualified Health Centers that provide these services are entitled to reimbursement from Medicaid, which operates under the guidelines of the Program Information Notice, regardless of whether they the state Medicaid plan includes their services. However, these service providers must practice according to the state law in order to benefit from these guidelines.

Although the blind, disabled and aged people, who are the main beneficiaries of the Medicaid funding that is available for behavioral health services, may not have easy access to public health services that meet medical necessities by targeting populations, the Program Information Notice means a lot to them and the overall Medicaid population. This is because it varies from one state to another.

Although CHC offers behavioral health services to Medicaid populations that have lower behavioral health and higher physical health risks, the Program Information Notice is the overall financier in all states that have public health systems whose focus is on populations that have serious emotional problems and mental illnesses since it has the ability to create opportunities for other Medicaid populations. The Program Information Notice serves to assure net populations of their safety by ensuring consistencies between CHCs and HRSA initiatives, which are essential for the creation of behavioral health capacities and the reduction of disparities in the provision of health services.

Medicaid models,which are different in each state, have numerous financing implications for the Behavioral Health Services that populations with various illnesses receive since their differences make is possible for CHC, CMHC and every community partnership with them to identify business models that provide the necessary support for their integration activities by assessing their specific policy and financing environments.

The aforementioned partnerships enable the Medicaid population to access behavioral health services easily since they are largely responsible for the development of policy directions that deal directly with the access to these services without harming or excluding any populations that receive their services from the public health system.

The Program Information Notice,which has a responsibility to implement and address the structural and financial issues of the various clinical models, plays a vital role in helping to make the treatment for depression more effective especially in primary care settings hence its special link to Clinical and System Strategies.

Although some resulting papers from special issues of Administration and Policy Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research provide useful information about the various policy and financial barriers that exist in the system, the Program Information Notice provides a different integration approach. Consequently, it has proven to be more effective in patching together various sources of funding.

State Medicaid pilot sites seek to find similar financing components even though the Federally Qualified Health Center and CMHC have a partnership that has a sustainable model for financing CMHC clinicians in through the various FQHC sites.