State seeks to expand services at community mental health centers – InDepthNH.org

By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org

CONCORD The state Department of Health and Human Services hopes to help transform community mental health centers through a federal demonstration program.

The Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee on Friday approved $1 million in additional federal funds as the agency seeks to expand access to high-quality, evidence-based and trauma-informed behavioral health services within the centers.

The Division of Behavioral Health anticipates the centers will use the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic model, which agency officials say has been successful in other states in reducing emergency room visits and hospital readmissions.

Katja Fox, director of the behavioral health division, told the committee that her agency just received an extension from the federal government for the planning and implementation stages of the program. He said the additional money will help fund the program beyond the planning stage, which is where it currently is.

The goal of the CCBHC model is to transform community behavioral health systems to ensure easy access to comprehensive and coordinated behavioral health services, department officials say in information provided to the committee.

The committee approved the item.

COVID Money

The committee learned that $16 million of money from the American Rescue Plan Act is available to be reallocated before the Dec. 31 deadline.

The committee approved items Friday that will lower that number, but the executive director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Relief and Recovery, Taylor Caswell, said he expects additional money will be available to reallocate it. before the deadline.

The committee approved using $1 million to add a fund to help homeowners, residential property owners and daycare facilities remove lead from their properties.

New Hampshire Housing’s Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes program is currently funded at $88 million, and additional ARPA money will bring the total to $89 million.

The committee also approved using $2 million in ARPA funds to help pay for two projects on the coast. The money will be used for an engineering study, design, permitting and construction of a replacement building for the Portsmouth Fish Pier and engineering, design, bidding, permitting and construction of a structure to better accommodate retail operations at Rye Harbour. Both facilities are owned by the state.

Another $1 million will be used to repair off-road vehicle paths damaged by last year’s rain and flooding.

Deficit of nursing homes

The committee also approved increasing Medicaid payments to nursing homes by $25 million to be split between the federal and state governments.

The shortfall was the result of a billing delay that moved the obligations from fiscal year 2023 to fiscal year 2024.

Health and Human Services officials say that led to under-budgeting the cost of nursing home care.

There were a significant number of complaints. that were paid in state fiscal year 2024 that corresponded to prior period services and were not detected during budget preparation. When determining rates for the current state fiscal year, the Department uses trends from previous periods, officials said. Due to the delay in billing these claims, the data showed utilization below the experienced need.

COVID shots

The committee approved accepting $256,069 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop a new publicly available data system on childhood vaccines.

Those federal funds will support the development of new data dashboards to visualize the geographic distribution of childhood vaccines in the state, HHS officials said in information provided to the committee. These new resources will improve understanding of local vaccine-preventable disease protection and support disease management and outbreak response needs.

Committee Rep. Jess Edwards, R-Auburn, questioned what information would be available to the public.

He suggested including the number of childhood COVID vaccinations we have given. I think we’re putting kids at risk by giving them the COVID vaccine, even though the CDC says it’s okay.
Iain Watt, the acting director of Public Health Services, said they have not yet issued a request for proposals on the new database, but are currently working on what information will best serve the public.

Edwards said the agency needs to have an idea of ​​what they want before the RFP is issued, and he’d like to be informed as the agency moves forward.

Watt said they are reviewing what data they have available and what would be meaningful, noting that vaccination data has recently become opt-in and the data is affected by that.

The vaccination program used to allow parents and others to opt out of entering their details into the database, but now people have to sign up to provide the information, so it’s less robust.

The committee also approved a $2 million grant from the CDC to join a national wastewater surveillance program for respiratory viruses and infectious diseases, including COVID.

The program will test treatment plants throughout the state and the effluents will be processed by the states public health laboratory.

Test results and placements will be publicly available.

Successful implementation of wastewater control will give citizens greater awareness of pathogens circulating in communities across the state to mitigate the spread of disease and potentially reduce burdens on the health care system, said the health officials

The tax committee will meet on May 19 at 10 a.m. in the Legislative Office building in rooms 210-211.

Garry Rayno can be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.