2025 advocacy piece

11 Individuals with serious mental health and substance use disorders have acute comorbidities that demand more case management and care coordination, integration of primary health care, more highly credentialed staff, direct treatment for co-occurring disorders, and more care that is ongoing. The CCBHCs, with enhanced electronic health record capabilities and extensive community collaborations, deliver all of this. When Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) first were developed in 2017, they were hailed as the service delivery model of the future. They have lived up to the expectations, providing a full continuum of care that ranges from detox and mental health crisis services to care management assistance with social determinants of health and everything in between, including primary medical care. New Jersey now has 21 CCBHCs, but only seven of those are operating under the federal demonstration program (14 have been established under direct grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration). The end of the federal demonstration on September 30th means New Jersey will no longer receive an enhanced 65% federal match. Instead, the federal match for the seven CCBHCs will revert to the standard 50% match. This will result in the need for $10 million in state funds to cover the nine-month period New Jersey’s Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics Enable Individuals to Change their Stories Investing in the workforce The CCBHC model is alleviating the impact of the behavioral health workforce shortage by enabling clinics to increase hiring. • Medicaid [demonstration] CCBHCs and established grantees hired 11,292 new staff positions, or a median of 15 new positions per clinic. • Hiring was greatest among Medicaid CCBHCs, which reported a median of 22 new positions per clinic. • Licensed clinicians, peer support specialists, care coordinators and nurses were among the most commonly hired staff. Source: National Council for Mental Wellbeing 2024 CCBHC Impact Report in the FY2026 budget where this lower federal match will apply. Once the SPA is finalized and funding secured for the current state-certified programs, the Department of Human Services must prepare to open the certification process to other organizations across New Jersey. New Jersey’s federal demonstration participation will end on September 30, 2025. In order to sustain the model, the Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services (DMAHS) sought to include the seven demonstration CCBHCs in its 1115 Comprehensive Waiver. This would have allowed the State to continue the unique funding approach for these CCHBCs, which is based on actual costs and which has permitted these programs to better recruit The CCBHC model is the most comprehensive, integrated, person-centered model of care and has a proven track record of successful outcomes along a myriad of measures. New Jersey must ensure this highly effective program model is sustained and expanded statewide. and retain staff, expand service lines and increase capacity. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) did not approve this approach and instead urged New Jersey to develop a State Plan Amendment (SPA) for its CCBHC program with fidelity to the national model, while providing New Jersey a waiver of state-wideness so that only the current seven demonstration CCBHCs would be under the domain of the SPA.