Behavioral Health

Let our behavioral health consultants help your organization reach its vision of excellence.

Behavioral health is at the center of a changing healthcare environment, from policy to payment to clinical transformation. That’s why effective strategies for behavioral health are more critical than ever. With extensive policy, operations, funding, and clinical expertise, HMA’s behavioral health consultants can help your organization create strategies that will improve equitable access to high-quality care, maintain operational and financial sustainability, and allow you to navigate the rapidly changing behavioral health landscape. 

As the nation’s mental health and substance use needs rise at unprecedented rates, there has never been more opportunity to improve mental health and substance use systems of care. Our expert team partners with you to address the needs of the moment and supports you in transformation for the future.     

Workforce Policy Briefs: Meeting the Demand for Behavioral Health Services

HMA teamed up with the National Council for Mental Wellbeing to create a series of policy briefs outlining immediate policy actions states can take to expand and stabilize the behavioral health workforce.   

Meet some of our HMA behavioral health experts.

Our interdisciplinary team of behavioral health consultants includes formerly and currently practicing clinicians whose direct caregiver experience makes them indispensable to healthcare transformation and behavioral health services.

The HMA Institute on Addiction

The HMA Behavioral Health team works in partnership with the HMA Institute on Addiction (HMA IOA) to develop strategies for those with co-occurring substance use disorders and serious mental illness.

Services across the healthcare spectrum.

With a deep understanding of current and emerging shifts in care and policy, our behavioral health consultants are well equipped to provide specialized services for a range of clients, including:

Federal

State

Local Government

Payers

Hospitals and Integrated Delivery Systems

Providers and Provider Associates

In The Past 8 Years, HMA Has Helped:

  • More than 20 state Medicaid agencies
  • Over 20 non-Medicaid state agencies
  • All national and more than 20 regional health plans
  • Hundreds of community-based provider organization
  • More than 15 health systems
  • Over 60 CCBHC projects
  • More than 30 organizations to achieve CCBHC funding with successful CCBHC-Expansion Grants

Federal-Focused Services

  • Policy design: HMA’s behavioral health team has supported multiple federal policy efforts, including the Centers for Medicaid Innovation Accelerator Program and the development of a toolkit for states for defining and measuring serious mental illness
  • Innovation Demonstrations: These include State Innovation Model (SIM) training and technical assistance for Behavioral Health Integration and State Opioid Response Grant (SOR) implementation

State, Payer and County Government-Focused Services

  • State restructure: Improving collaboration between Medicaid and non-Medicaid authorities, or adapting state department structures around behavioral health
  • Policy design: Shifting from carve-in to carve-out as well as new hybrid alternatives and 1115 Waiver design, development and implementation
  • Payment reform: Rate analysis and increases, value-based payment (VBP) design and implementation, and Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) demonstration, prospective payment system (PPS) modeling as well as state-based models
  • Needs assessment, strategy and continuum design: Giving attention to stepped care to maximize access and improved equity of behavioral health services
  • Quality and accountability strategy: Enabling states to improve accountability of provider networks while reducing unnecessary administrative burden (shifting from process to outcome-based measurement)
  • Data streamlining and interoperability: Reducing the inefficient and fragmented data reporting across behavioral health funding streams; providing coherent and meaningful data reporting for states to monitor the behavioral health system
  • Training and technical assistance for clinical transformation: Behavioral health integration, opioid response, Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT), enhanced referral and other network level transformations
  • Collective impact collaboratives: Bringing community partners and behavioral health together to solve complex needs
  • Justice-involved behavioral health: Program design, implementation, and payment
  • Crisis best practice, and clinical model design and implementation: Including 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline mobile, and stabilization; diversion and law enforcement behavioral health collaboratives (i.e., multidisciplinary response teams); design, finance and effective implementation
  • Public health and behavioral health: Facilitating intersections and population health approaches to meet full continuum of need

Services for Providers and Provider Associations

  • Strategic planning: Helping you navigate the changing landscape of behavioral health delivery
  • Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) expansion: Application, implementation and expansion of programming such as integrated care, MAT services and crisis programming
  • Value-based payment readiness
  • Program design and implementation
  • Crisis best practice, and clinical model design and implementation:  Including 998 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, mobile, and stabilization, diversion and law enforcement behavioral health collaboratives (i.e., multidisciplinary response teams).
  • Measurement-based care and improved outcomes-based accountability
  • Data development and reporting
  • Revenue cycle management

Services for Hospitals and Integrated Delivery Systems

  • Continuum assessment and strategy: Supporting health systems in determining their role in behavioral health and program development
  • Emergency department utilization: Helping to create solutions and understanding population needs
  • Integration of behavioral health and primary care: Pilots and large-scale implementation
  • Acute care: Assistance with design, operations, implementation and payment for both psychiatric and substance use units

Behavioral health insights

Webinar replay: Behavioral health: moving access to care and network adequacy into the 21st century

This webinar was held on September 7, 2023. States, counties, health plans, and providers are asking how to meet the …

Webinar replay: Medicare policy changes impacting behavioral health services workforce and population health

This webinar was held on September 12, 2023.  Continuing our discussion from Part 1 of this series, recent rule changes …

Webinar replay: Medicaid 1115 justice waivers and special populations: meeting the needs of justice-involved youth

This webinar was held on August 17, 2023.  HMA’s webinar series, 1115 Medicaid Justice Demonstration Waivers: Bridging Healthcare, focused on …

Webinar replay: new tools for Medicare policy changes impacting behavioral health services

This webinar was held on July 26, 2023. In light of the recent Medicare regulatory and statutory expansion of behavioral …

Webinar replay: youth mental health access: school-based intervention strategies

This webinar was held on June 14, 2023. The youth behavioral health crisis has resulted in a cascade of federal …

HMA annual conference on innovations in publicly sponsored healthcare

Innovations in Publicly Sponsored Healthcare: How Medicaid, Medicare, and Marketplaces Are Driving Value, Equity, and Growth Pre-Conference Workshop: October 29, …

New experts join HMA in April 2023

HMA is pleased to welcome new experts to our family of companies in April 2023. Jed Abell – Consulting ActuaryWakely …

Webinar replay: opportunities for state payers to improve & align incentives for treatment of substance use disorder

This webinar was held on June 6, 2023.  Health Management Associates (HMA) is proud to offer a 3-part series of …

Child and family wellbeing: May is National Foster Care Month

This is part of an ongoing series highlighting efforts in Human Services and Family Wellbeing.  During the month of May, National …

Child and family wellbeing: family resilience

This is part of an ongoing series highlighting efforts in human services and family wellbeing.  For decades, practitioners have recognized …

Value-Based Payment (VBP) – Is your organization ready?

Utilization of value-based payment (VBP) strategies continues to expand, with states and health plans recognizing the benefits of rewarding outcomes …

Biden administration encourages states to apply for Medicaid Reentry 1115 Demonstration for individuals in carceral settings

This week our In Focus section reviews guidance from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), released on April 17, 2023, …

Thank you for helping us make excellent progress. We could not have done it without you. You flawlessly moved us from every stage of formation through a smooth transition. I am grateful and hope to work with HMA again in the future.”

– HMA Behavioral Health Client

Ready to talk about your behavioral health project?

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