Governor DeWine Announces Competency Restoration and Diversion Work Group Recommendations

Under the leadership of Governor Mike DeWine, Ohio continues to take bold steps to ensure all people facing mental health challenges are able to access care in the best setting for their needs.

Governor DeWine and Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (OhioMHAS) Director LeeAnne Cornyn today released the final recommendations of the Governor’s Work Group on Competency Restoration and Diversion. The recommendations aim to free up more beds in the state’s psychiatric hospitals, while also expanding local options for mental health treatment and support across Ohio.

“At the heart of these recommendations is our desire to help all Ohioans in need of mental health supports access the right care, in the right place, at the right time,” said Governor DeWine. “The work group’s comprehensive recommendations give us a unique chance to improve our delivery of mental health services and streamline recovery timelines for everyone from individuals involved in the criminal justice system who have been ordered to our state psychiatric hospitals, to Ohio families whose loved ones are facing a mental health crisis and are in urgent need of treatment.”

View the Recommendations Report

Governor DeWine convened the work group earlier this year to address the lack of available beds in Ohio’s six state-operated regional psychiatric hospitals. These hospitals are currently at 96% capacity, and their populations almost exclusively consist of individuals involved in the criminal justice system, including individuals transferred from jails, those ordered for restoration to competency to stand trial, and those ordered for treatment after a Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity acquittal.

“This makes it practically impossible for anyone to use this valuable community resource without committing a crime first. Something needed to change,” said Director Cornyn, who served as chair of the work group. “At the same time, our group understood that we needed to go beyond merely adding additional hospital beds and understand the root causes of the gridlock. We met with experts in the mental health and criminal justice fields, as well as people who have lived in jails and our psychiatric hospitals, and many others, and determined that – considering the many interwoven aspects of mental health and criminal justice – there were several opportunities for improvement across these systems.

“After months of research, we are proud to release our final report,” Cornyn continued. “We are confident our recommendations will improve how the mental health and criminal justice systems work together to help improve outcomes for all types of patients, while at the same time, opening up new doors to treatment in our communities.”

Implementation of many of the recommendations is already underway:

• Further supporting statewide mental health crisis services – like the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline – to ensure all Ohioans have someone to call, someone to respond, and somewhere to go when experiencing a mental health crisis.
• Increasing the number of available beds within the state’s network of regional psychiatric hospitals.
• Exploring strategies to recruit and retain the best and brightest minds to work in the state’s mental healthcare and criminal justice fields.
• Expanding cross-training opportunities for professionals working in the mental healthcare and criminal justice fields to help them understand their counterparts’ processes.
• Launching “navigation teams” to engage individuals with mental health and/or substance use disorders throughout the criminal justice system and to link these individuals with opportunities to receive the care they need.
• Creating local programs that proactively respond to individuals who interact repeatedly with criminal justice and mental health systems.
• Developing practices to better evaluate the mental health needs and risk concerns of those entering the criminal justice system early on in the process.
• Streamlining motions for competency evaluation through screening tools to ensure the right individuals are evaluated and access care.
• Improving the consistency in access to necessary medications for those in jails with mental health and/or substance use disorders.
• Continuing ongoing work to expand the availability of community-based residential treatment facilities as avenues to step individuals out of inpatient care, while continuing the proper treatment needed to sustain recovery.

“We have the ability to implement many of the recommendations in the report within our existing structure at OhioMHAS and across our mental health and criminal justice systems. In fact, much of this work has already begun,” said Director Cornyn. “Through these recommendations, we believe we can safely and thoughtfully reduce the current strain on our regional psychiatric hospitals and increase access to care for non-criminally-involved patients – linking more people to the type of care that’s right for them and improving health outcomes for our state.”

Among other ongoing efforts across the state, the report also spotlights Ohio’s continued work to increase inpatient psychiatric treatment capacity:

• The Hospital Access Funds program allows community mental health and addiction recovery boards to utilize state funds to pay for patient stays in private mental health hospitals when a state bed is not available.
• In May, Governor DeWine, Director Cornyn, and other mental health system leaders opened Central Ohio Behavioral Healthcare – a new, state-of-the-art facility in Columbus, which has added 30 more beds to Ohio’s regional psychiatric hospital in Columbus.
• The most recent State Capital Budget, signed by Governor DeWine in June, also includes $10 million for the design and planning of a brand new behavioral healthcare hospital in the Miami Valley. This new hospital will add more than 200 patient beds to the state system, increasing access to care for those in need of inpatient services, while reducing the burden on hospitals in other regions.

About the Work Group
The Governor’s Work Group on Competency Restoration and Diversion included professionals in the field of behavioral health, criminal justice, and psychology, along with leaders from state agencies, community organizations, and other local partners.

Over the course of several months, the work group met regularly to discuss the current competency restoration and diversion landscape, identify challenges and opportunities, and hear from experts on best practices and innovation. In addition to regular meetings, regional listening sessions were held across the state in each of Ohio’s six regional hospital catchment areas to gain further insights from local community members and leaders about their unique challenges. Also, a large convening of current and former criminal justice-involved psychiatric hospital patients took place to capture the voices of individuals with lived experience.

Group members spoke with subject matter experts and analyzed themes from the regional listening sessions and lived experience panel. The work group compiled information gathered through these various sources to inform the recommendations contained within the final report.