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BHS proposes targeted 117-bed expansion and housing linkages to reduce boarding
Summary
The Department of Public Health's Behavioral Health Services presented a bed-optimization simulation that found bottlenecks across acute psychiatric, skilled-nursing, residential and 12-month treatment beds and recommended an initial 117-bed expansion paired with housing investments and annual re-running of the model to improve flow for people experiencing homelessness and reduce inappropriate inpatient boarding.
Marlo Simmons, acting director for Behavioral Health Services, and Dr. Anton Neguse Bland, director for mental health reform, updated the Health Commission on July 7 on system performance, COVID-19 impacts and a bed-optimization study meant to right-size acute behavioral-health capacity.
Simmons provided system context: BHS reaches about 25,000 people in treatment and roughly 40,000 across prevention programs annually; the BHS budget is approximately $450 million and roughly two-thirds of services are delivered via contracts with about 80 community-based organizations. She described equity initiatives, language-access improvements, expansion of the mobile response team for youth, telehealth pivots and deployment of behavioral-health staff in shelter-hotels and…
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