The Crisis Task Force convened by OhioMHAS has continued meeting monthly in 2022 and the six subcommittees of the task force have finalized recommendations. The subcommittees finished sharing recommendations with the larger task force in the May meeting and took final comments and recommendations from stakeholders. We met with OhioMHAS staff and their consultants to discuss our recommendations. The full report will be delivered to OhioMHAS on May 31 and the department will review and make final edits with the goal to share the full report in July.

The recommendations from the task force subcommittees will be included in the final report of recommendations to OhioMHAS developed by the consultants from Healthcare Perspective and Zia Partners through their work with the subcommittees. As a reminder, there are 6 Committees covering various aspects of the crisis continuum, see the descriptions outlined below.

Service-Specific Committees:

1. Connect: 9-8-8 planning committee and subcommittees.
2. Respond: Delineating all services that reflect initial response including mobile and walk in services, and services targeted for adults and children, MH and/or SUD. Subcommittees will focus on specific service types: MRSS, Mobile Crisis for Adults, BH Urgent Care, and look at service definitions, standards, and operational/financing/regulatory needs of each. This Committee will also be tasked with focusing on transportation.
3. Stabilize/Thrive: Delineating all services that reflect stabilization after initial response:  Crisis Center with Observation, Residential Crisis Services (MH and SUD), Intensive Continuing Crisis Intervention, Inpatient. Subcommittees again will focus on specific service types, and look at service definitions, standards, and operational/financing/regulatory needs of each. Stabilization can’t end until it is connected to Thrive.

Overarching Committees:

1. Community Crisis Coordination: Addressing how to have ADAMHS Boards, providers, Medicaid MCOs, law enforcement, health systems, insurers, people with lived experience, schools, and other partners work collaboratively in each community (and region) to coordinate the provision of an effective crisis continuum. This Committee will likely have a subcommittee focusing on regional planning and coordination.
2. Performance Metrics and Data: Discussing what are the best performance metrics for evaluating crisis system performance at the community level (that support metrics and standards for individual service types), and how to ensure collecting and acting on performance metrics can improve system access and response.
3. Financing the Continuum:  Discussing how state general funds, Medicaid, other third-party payers, local funds, health systems, federal funds, etc. are best coordinated over all to establish the financial structure that will best support the vision of the OhioMHAS Vision for the Crisis Continuum. There will likely be subcommittees that coordinates and collects information from various funders.