Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Behavioral Health Medicaid topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Trillium Health Resources outlines behavioral-health reach, tailored-plan transition and local projects in Onslow County
Summary
Trillium Health Resources presented an annual update to Onslow County commissioners detailing services under the Medicaid-tailored plan, local membership counts, implementation lessons, and pilot projects including naloxone distribution, community opportunity centers and a technology pilot called Tula.
Victoria Jackson, regional vice president for Trillium Health Resources, delivered the organization's annual report to the Onslow County Board of Commissioners on April 7, describing who Trillium serves locally, data from mid-2024, and ongoing projects in the county.
Jackson said Trillium is “one of four LME-MCOs in the state of North Carolina” that manages care for individuals with severe behavioral-health needs and that the organization covers a 46-county region. She told commissioners that, across Trillium’s service area, the organization served a little over 80,000 unique individuals from July to December 2024, with unduplicated counts of roughly 57,388 receiving mental-health services, 15,583 receiving substance-use services and 18,537 receiving intellectual and developmental disability services. For Onslow County specifically, Jackson said Trillium served 4,579 members during that period.
Jackson described the July 1 launch of the Medicaid “tailored plan,” which moved Trillium onto a model that includes some physical-health benefits in addition to behavioral health for the populations Trillium serves. She said the tailored plan expansion led to implementation challenges — notably a large increase in call volume, the need to work more closely with transportation vendor Motive Care, and the importance of provider-flexibility measures to avoid service interruptions during the transition.
Jackson also described several local projects and pilots: substance-use prevention programming in schools, distribution of naloxone kits to community organizations, a free recovery-support app (CHES) with peer supports, regional “community opportunity centers” to address social determinants of health (still in early stages), small-business funding to support members seeking employment or entrepreneurship, and a technology pilot called Tula (Trillium Ultimate Living Assistant) to support independence for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities through enabling devices and remote supports.
Jackson said Trillium is preparing for a future foster-care specialty plan (phase 3 of Medicaid transformation), noting that Healthy Blue (Blue Cross Blue Shield/Healthy Blue) was announced by the state to manage the foster-care specialty plan beginning Dec. 1 and that Trillium and its partners are working on the transition.
Jackson closed by providing contact information for member services and a 24/7 behavioral-health crisis line; no commissioners requested further details during the meeting.
Ending: Trillium emphasized local membership counts, implementation lessons from the tailored-plan launch, and several county-focused projects intended to address substance use, recovery supports, transportation and technology-enabled independent living.
