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Closing the treatment gap in behavioral health services requires providers to be able to meet people’s needs no matter where or how they enter the system. A 30-year-old organization operating in Arizona communities has made significant strides in this area, helping a variety of providers build their capacity to offer comprehensive care.
Crisis Preparation and Recovery, Inc. (CPR) began in the mid-1990s as a crisis response expert for organizations and communities. Its leaders recognized early on that patients’ mental health concerns often were left unaddressed in the general healthcare system. “A lot of the hospitals didn’t have a mental health team,” said CPR Executive Chairman Mike Boylan, LCSW.
Collaborative care is at the heart of CPR’s efforts in communities across Arizona. Its services include specialized evaluations for serious mental illness, crisis management counseling and integrated behavioral health care services in partnership with primary care providers. “We contract directly with health plans and health systems,” Boylan said.
Reflecting communities’ desire to achieve a more compassionate and effective response to residents in mental health crisis, CPR is embedding counselors on crisis calls with first responders, under contracts with the city of Phoenix and three other Arizona municipalities.
CPR’s leaders also see an emerging opportunity in maternal mental health, seeking to enter collaborative arrangements with OB/GYN clinics, Boylan said.
These relationships have resulted in a highly diversified payer mix for the organization. Around 30% of CPR’s payer base is in commercial insurance, another 30% in Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans, and the remainder in Medicaid and state-supported services.
CPR has successfully expanded from its initial base in crisis response at a challenging time in the industry, amid both soaring demand for care and a shortage of qualified clinicians. Boylan said the organization has had to improve compensation while also streamlining some operations to achieve savings.
At the same time as it addresses organizational challenges, CPR has taken a broader view of its role in the continuum of care in Arizona. As an active member of the Arizona Council of Human Service Providers, it has strongly advocated increased state funding support for mental health services. CPR recently played a role in helping to secure payment rate increases for some mental health billing codes in the state.
Boylan believes that for many of the highest-risk patients, behavioral health organizations offer the optimal entry point to comprehensive care. “Sometimes the person hasn’t come into the primary care office,” he said. “They feel more of a connection to behavioral health entities.”
We at Sigmund Software are proud of our relationship with an organization that stands at the forefront of establishing strong models of collaborative care. These models depend on providers’ ability to share clinical data effectively in order to inform treatment.
The quality of care going forward depends on “how flexible behavioral health systems can be to meet the whole-health needs of the client and those of other healthcare organizations such as primary care providers and hospitals,” Boylan said. “We present ourselves as open and flexible to developing new service lines.”
