Characterizing Crisis Services Offered by Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics: Results From a National Survey

The authors aimed to examine how certified community behavioral health clinics (CCBHCs) fulfill crisis service requirements and whether clinics added crisis services after becoming a CCBHC.

National survey data on CCBHC crisis services were paired with data on clinic features and the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the counties within a CCBHC service area. The dependent variables were whether CCBHCs provided the three categories of CCBHC crisis services (i.e., crisis call lines, mobile crisis response, and crisis stabilization) directly or through another organization and whether these services were added after becoming a CCBHC. Descriptive statistics and multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed with data about clinics and the counties they served. In total, 449 CCBHCs were surveyed in the summer of 2022, with a response rate of 56%. The final sample comprised 247 clinics.

The number of CCBHC employees per 1,000 people within a CCBHC service area was significantly and positively associated with clinics providing some crisis services directly (mobile crisis response: adjusted OR [AOR]=1.46, 95% CI=1.08–1.98; crisis stabilization services: AOR=1.60, 95% CI=1.17–2.19). Compared with clinics that did not receive a CCBHC Medicaid bundled payment, clinics that received this payment had higher odds of adding mobile crisis response (AOR=2.52, 95% CI=1.28–4.97) and crisis stabilization services (AOR=3.19, 95% CI=1.51–6.72) after becoming a CCBHC.

CCBHC initiatives, particularly CCBHC Medicaid bundled payments, may provide opportunities to increase the availability of behavioral health crisis services, but the sufficiency of this increase for meeting crisis care needs remains unknown.