Behavioral health reform may come earlier than planned to parts of New Mexico. The executive committee overseeing the reform and development of services across the state announced early access funding opportunities at its meeting Tuesday.
The state is putting up to $26 million to fund urgently needed services while planning the larger system. That’s about $2 million for each behavioral health region.
Director of Behavioral Health Transformation and Innovation for the Health Care Authority, Kristie Brooks, said each award will be based on population size, behavioral health needs and service gaps within each region to ensure funds are distributed equitably.
“We want to avoid delaying critical services during the planning phase,” she said. “We hear, it’s been the feedback quite a bit, that this planning is important and it's necessary, and we need to continue that. But how can we also ensure that services are being provided?”
The early access money will go towards projects that will fit into the larger overall plan for each region's behavioral health system development, Brooks said. It’s all part of the Behavioral Health Reform and Investment Act, better known as Senate Bill 3, which passed through the Roundhouse earlier this year. Brooks said early access money will only be available to regions that have already submitted an application for their overall reform.
“To ensure that what we're doing here with these early access is directly related to the regional planning that's going to be happening in these regions,” she said.
SB3 charges the HCA and the Administrative Office of the Courts to break down the state into regions and develop a behavioral health system for each one based on each area’s unique needs. The overall structure will be decided through a process called SIM mapping, which includes meeting with stakeholders such as tribal representatives, providers, people with lived experience, and other community members.
Some public speakers at Tuesday's meeting pushed back on both the larger overall reform and the early access money, particularly when it comes to details. Ellen Pinnes with The Disability Coalition, for example, pointed out Bernalillo County has a third of the state’s population, but is limited to the same $2 million in early access funds as regions that have “more cows than people.”
“I think that it has not been properly thought through, and I hope that it will be sort of revised,” Pinnes said.
The timeline for early access money also drew criticism from?. Applications open on October 15th with a deadline of December 1st. Awards will be announced January 1, and funding is supposed to be released just two weeks later on January 15. Former State Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino said over decades working in the Roundhouse, he has only seen one person who was able to get money out of the state that quickly.
“Nobody else in my experience has ever been able to get money out the door in two weeks through the whole state contracting process,” he said. “But let's aim for it. Hey, what the heck.”
As for the overall regional planning, five of the 13 regions have submitted proposals, with three others having submitted partial applications and the rest still working through the SIM mapping process.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
