Grants Available for Integration of Behavioral Health and Primary Care

The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) Foundation’s Fostering Effective Integration of Behavioral Health and Primary Care grant initiative may be a potentially valuable opportunity for your business or someone you know.  BCBSMA is now accepting Letters of Inquiry (LOI) for the 2015-2018 funding year, due July 29, 2015.
BCBSMA is focused on ensuring that low-income and vulnerable patients have access to integrated behavioral health and primary care services.   The BCBSMA grant initiative provides at least three years of funding, up to $200,000 a year, for experienced programs to assess how integration of behavioral health and primary care services impact access to integrated care, patient engagement and satisfaction, and quality of care. Some of the essential elements for funding consideration include:

• Programs poised to expand by broadening their focus on a specific patient population, co-morbidity, new screening, additional service or some other intervention component that creates the condition for pre- and post-measurement;
• Enhancement or creation of a patient registry;
• Detailed documentation of annual program implementation costs; and
• Experience with measuring success of the integration program.

Who is Eligible?
Eligible applicants include community health centers, community mental health centers, nonprofit community or hospital affiliated primary care physician groups serving a significant proportion of low-income and vulnerable populations, other safety net providers and community-based organizations whose initiatives are based in Massachusetts.
AAFCPAs strongly encourages clients who are developing robust, effective, and efficient integrated behavioral health and primary care models to consider the BCBSMA’s Fostering Effective Integration of Behavioral Health and Primary Care grant initiative.  You may learn more by clicking here.  Please feel free to forward along to your contacts who may find this useful as well.
If you have any questions about the integration of primary care and behavioral health, please contact your AAFCPA partner, or Matt Hutt, CPA, partner, at 774.512.4043, mhutt@nullaafcpa.com.