The Need
Crisis situations can lead individuals who reside in the community to seek treatment or care in a hospital or institutional setting. Unfortunately, these emergency situations can often be the impetus for long-term placement in these settings. If preventive services were expanded, crisis response improved, and 13 | Colorado HCBS Spending Plan transitions strengthened, individuals may be able to, instead, return to their homes and communities.
✅Initiative 2.01. - Behavioral Health Transition Support Grants to Prevent Institutionalization - Completed
Key Project Achievements and/or Activities:
The goal of the project was to support expansion of behavioral health crisis and transition services between residential/inpatient and outpatient care. The grantees selected provide critical safety net services. Individuals served by our grantees included people with criminal justice experience and involvement, members of the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC community, and people living in rural and frontier areas of Colorado.
Summary / Project Outcome:
Organizations receiving grant funds were active from 02/13/2023-09/30/2024. This grant awarded a total of $12,604,815 of which $9,262,408 was expended by the grantees.
Grantees used these funds to expand their behavioral health transition and community based care capacity through activities, including: crisis intervention support programs; transportation support services; various clinical, patient navigation and community health worker trainings; startup of a mobile counseling center; housing assistance; increasing community outreach and engagement; and staff training in EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) topics, such as racial trauma, cultural humility and gender-affirming care. Providers using grant funds also worked to build capacity for treatment and care coordination services for their clientele as well as to build workforce capacity. The grantees for this project were specifically chosen for their work with historically underserved and under-resourced populations.
✅Initiative 2.02. - Expand Behavioral Health Mobile Crisis Teams - Completed
Key Project Achievements and/or Activities:
The Mobile Crisis Response (MCR) Expansion grant funding was implemented across the state of Colorado through a partnership between Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) and the Behavioral Health Administration (BHA) to expand and improve community-based mobile crisis intervention services. Mobile Crisis Services have been standardized across the state to offer de-escalation and stabilization to people in a self-defined behavioral health crisis. This project funded the expansion of existing teams across the state to meet the newly developed state-wide standards.
Summary / Project Outcome:
The Mobile Crisis Response services have been standardized, which codifies the practices and standards for community-based responses in Colorado. These services are available:
- Anywhere in Colorado
- Any time (24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year)
- In the home and community (not in hospitals, jails, or inpatient facilities)
- By calling 988 or 911 to connect to dispatch
- Outside of Law Enforcement (Law Enforcement involvement is not required to engage when Mobile Crisis Response is dispatched)
- With special populations and providers available to serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injury, severe mental illness, serious emotional disturbance, co-occurring disorders, deaf, hard of hearing and deaf-blind individuals, and individuals with other cognitive needs or who reflect neurodiversity.
External Facing Reports/Websites:
Mobile Crisis Response Website
Colorado Mobile Crisis Response Definition
✅Initiative 2.03. - Institute for Mental Disease (IMD) Exclusion, Risk Mitigation Policy - Completed
Key Project Achievements and/or Activities:
Through this ARPA project, the team has set up a website specific to Institute of Mental Disease (IMD) policy work. To review many of the project outcomes and deliverables, including the Behavioral Health Campus Policy, please visit the IMD webpage.
Additionally, with support from this project, the State of Colorado has been able to pursue a multi-component amendment to its current 1115 Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Demonstration Waiver. Work from this project in support of that effort can be found on the 1115 SUD Demonstration web page.
Summary / Project Outcome:
HCPF contracted with vendor Health Management Associates (HMA) to explore and develop opportunities to mitigate risks and barriers to psychiatric inpatient level of care on campuses and facilities designated as IMDs within the state of Colorado due to federally mandated restrictions on campuses and facilities deemed IMDs.
External Facing Reports/Websites: