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Ohio behavioral health director highlights MRSS expansion, workforce incentives and recovery housing
Summary
Leanne Cornyn, director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, told the committee the agency is expanding mobile response and stabilization services, investing ARPA funds to recruit behavioral health workers and certifying recovery housing to improve treatment access.
Leanne Cornyn, director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, told the House Children and Human Services Committee that her agency has prioritized mobile crisis response and workforce recruitment to reduce hospitalizations and criminal‑justice involvement among people with behavioral health needs.
Cornyn said hospitals are at about 96 percent capacity and that “more than 9 out of 10 of those beds are occupied by criminal justice involved patients,” highlighting strain on both behavioral‑health and general hospital services.
The nut graf: OMHAS framed short‑term federal grants, a statewide rollout of youth mobile response and stabilization services (MRSS), and workforce incentives as key tools to reduce hospital stays, jails and other high‑cost outcomes while increasing community treatment capacity.
Cornyn described MRSS as a mobile team that can arrive within 60 minutes to stabilize youth in homes, schools or emergency departments and provide up to 42 days of aftercare. She said MRSS is available in "more than 50 counties" and that OMHAS, in partnership with the Ohio Department of Medicaid, will scale the program to all 88 counties in the coming months; services will be available regardless of ability to pay.
She also described behavioral‑health workforce initiatives funded by $85,000,000 in ARPA home and community‑based dollars: a Great Minds Fellowship that attracted more than 1,000 new or soon‑to‑be graduates, a "welcome back" program that recruited several hundred former workers, and a workforce commitment incentive that provided student loan support to additional recruits. Cornyn said those recruitment efforts have attracted over 2,000 individuals into community behavioral health roles so far.
On treatment and recovery, Cornyn said Ohio increased the number of opioid treatment providers since 2019 and noted community treatment serves nearly 38,000 unique Ohioans receiving medication for opioid use disorder and related services. She also highlighted recovery housing certification, saying the registry has more than 1,200 recovery homes and reported a surge in providers joining the registry in January.
Cornyn cited recent declines in statewide rates: she said the Ohio Department of Health reported a decline in suicide deaths for the first time in three years and a 9 percent drop in unintentional overdose deaths in 2023. "We are still losing nearly 5 Ohioans each day to suicide and 12 to unintentional overdoses," she said.
Ending: Cornyn asked the committee to support a statewide crisis infrastructure and offered to provide program lists and remaining balances for workforce funds when asked by the chair.
