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July 5, 2023
Media contact: Timothy Heider, 971-599-0459, timothy.heider@oha.oregon.gov
SALEM, Ore. — State health officials have launched a comprehensive new review that will analyze residential mental health and substance use treatment capacity throughout the state, identify gaps and guide investments, including the allocation of approximately $164 million legislators appropriated to expand treatment in the 2023 legislative session.
The study will inform the state’s five-year plan to expand behavioral health treatment and build a more accessible, effective and equitable system of care.
Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has hired Public Consulting Group (PCG), a nationally known firm specializing in public sector management, consulting and operations improvement, to conduct the study.
The study is required to:
- Provide an estimate on the number and types of residential care beds provided and needed.
- Analyze how behavioral health investments are balanced between supporting ongoing new capacity on an ongoing basis and potential added capacity.
- Analyze how behavioral health investments are influencing behavioral health outcomes.
The study will build on a 2022 OHSU-PSU School of Public Health analysis that identified significant service gaps in the state’s behavioral health system.
The results will serve as a framework for Governor Kotek’s five-year roadmap to build out the behavioral health system of care that she has promised to bring to the Legislature in 2024.
PCG will be working with peers, individuals with lived experience, community providers, counties and local governments and other state agencies to facilitate information gathering over the next several months. The Governor has directed OHA to complete the analysis by the end of 2023.
“Developing this comprehensive analysis will require close and meaningful engagement with our state, peers, individuals with lived experience, community, and Tribal partners to ensure that there is a clear and comprehensive understanding of the priority needs and gaps in the system,” said OHA Behavioral Health Director Ebony Clarke.
“We are moving urgently to complete this effort. We must find effective solutions to expand treatment and put more people on the path to recovery,” Clarke said.
During the 2023 session the Legislature maintained and expanded the major investments in recent years to support the Governor’s priority to reduce deaths from unmet behavioral health needs and disrupt the pipeline that links untreated mental illness and addiction to homelessness, hospitalization and jail.
Those investments included:
- $32.4 million to support the 988-crisis line connecting people who are experiencing a mental health crisis to counseling and support.
- $50 million to expand residential treatment bed capacity for people with severe mental illness.
- $6 million to ensure more effective community-based placements for Oregon State Hospital patients who no longer need hospital-level care.
- $7 million to expand community-based treatment for people with severe psychiatric illness.
- $15 million to help reduce current gaps in residential treatment bed capacity.
- $3.1 million to provide incentives to recruit and retain counselors and other staff serving children, youth and their families.
- $6 million to address workforce gaps, especially in behavioral health programs.
- $4.9 million to ensure more people with mental health disorders receive treatment in the community, instead of being held in jail.
- $40 million in an opioid settlement investment, requiring funds be directed by the Opioid Settlement Board toward overdose prevention efforts, such as the distribution of naloxone kits across Oregon.
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