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County reports additions and planned bed expansions for behavioral health continuum; BH SIP applications exceed available state allocations
Summary
Health department officials updated the Board on the county's behavioral health bed network, recent additions, and the volume of applications submitted to the state's Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program (BH SIP); state awards will be announced later this month.
Los Angeles County health officials reported to the Board of Supervisors on the county's mental‑health and substance‑use disorder treatment bed network and the county's participation in the state Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program (BH SIP) bond rounds.
Doctor Lisa Wong, Director of Mental Health (DMH), said the county added dozens of subacute and residential treatment beds during the reporting quarter and detailed capacity across levels of care, including acute inpatient psychiatric beds, subacute beds, licensed residential care funds, interim housing beds and funded permanent supportive housing units. Wong noted the department's recent shift to reporting average census and the launch of a bed‑census survey to improve real‑time counts.
Doctor Gary Tsai (DPH representative for substance use services) reported additions to residential withdrawal management and interim housing beds and said proposals submitted for the state BH SIP bond round 1 exceeded the state's available allocation for California. The departments emphasized that DHCS awards are estimates and that awardees must still complete state licensing and county contracting before beds are counted in the local network.
Officials also described the county's capital and operating planning for Homekey Plus and other funding sources to create recovery housing and permanent supportive housing. Supervisors asked for disaggregated vacancy and utilization data, and department staff said they were building dashboards, contracting an external evaluator for CFCI and continuing licensing discussions with the state.
No formal board action was taken on the report; supervisors requested follow‑up information on the total number of licensed locked (inpatient and subacute) beds in the county and clearer tracking of vacancies and utilization.
