Board approves MOU with Beach City Health District to expand student behavioral-health services

At its June 10 meeting the Hermosa Beach City School District board approved a memorandum of understanding with Beach City Health District to formalize delivery of behavioral-health services to eligible students. Staff said the MOU designates Beach City Health District as an affiliate community-based provider and explained that because Hermosa Beach is a small district, Beach City Health District will perform billing and claims-processing tasks that larger districts typically handle in-house.

Board members raised questions about why the district is structuring services this way and how billing and privacy protections will be implemented. A board member asked, "I'm just trying to understand, like, why are we doing this again ... and how do we protect students' privacy if there is a data exchange?" Staff responded that the agreements include standard secure-handling provisions, a data-use addendum and that the affiliate-provider arrangement is necessary so the district can access state behavioral-health funding and the multipayer fee schedule.

The meeting record shows the board also approved a data-use agreement and an affiliate-provider addendum with Caron Behavioral Health (named in the agenda) to ensure secure handling and exchange of behavioral-health data and to cover administrative functions such as rostering and claims processing. Staff said these agreements are intended to align data management with legal and privacy standards and to enable providers to receive mandated state reimbursement for eligible services.

Board members expressed general support but asked staff to provide additional details about operational protections and billing flow. The agreements were presented, and the board approved the items as part of the consent/action items portion of the meeting.