This week Governor Baker signed into law An Act addressing barriers to care for mental health, comprehensive mental health legislation aimed at reforming the availability and timely delivery of mental health services, ensuring equitable access to care, and supporting the behavioral health workforce.
Two core components of the law that will affect all residents are:
- Mandating coverage for an annual mental health wellness exam, comparable to an annual physical exam; and
- Immediately implementing the new national 988 hotline for suicide prevention and mental health crisis response.
Included in the new legislation are many provisions aimed at helping children who are struggling with mental health. One essential element of the bill is a set of measures to address the Emergency Department (ED) boarding crisis head-on through multiple avenues, including:
- Updating the expedited psychiatric inpatient admissions (EPIA) protocol and creating an expedited evaluation and stabilization process for patients under 18;
- Establishing a complex case resolution panel to help resolve barriers to care for children with complex behavioral health needs;
- Requiring all hospital EDs to have a qualified behavioral health clinician available to evaluate and stabilize a person admitted to a hospital ED with a behavioral health presentation during all operating hours;
- Creating an ARPA-funded online portal that enables access to real-time data on and includes a search function that allows health care providers to easily search and find open beds using a number of criteria;
- Requiring quarterly reporting on the status of children and adolescents who are boarding, awaiting residential disposition or in the care or custody of a state agency and awaiting discharge to an appropriate foster home or a congregate or group care program;
- Directing the Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) to produce an annual report on child ED boarding; and
- Tasking the Health Policy Commission (HPC) with conducting a statewide pediatric behavioral health assessment every five years to inform future policymaking.
Additional measures that support children will:
- Require behavioral health assessments and referrals for children entering the foster care system;
- Enhance school-based behavioral health responses, programs and services;
- Limit the use of suspension and expulsion in licensed early education and care programs;
- Require the Office of Behavioral Health Promotion to convene a student stakeholder advisory committee on mental health that would work with DESE to develop and implement school-based programs that promote student mental health and wellbeing; and
- Create a school-based tele-behavioral health pilot program.
Workforce supports folded into the bill include:
- Funding for recruitment and retention of workers;
- Creating a loan repayment assistance program to recruit and retain child and adolescent psychiatrists at community mental health and health centers;
- Allowing interim licensure for licensed mental health counselors; and
- Creating a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner fellowship pilot program.
The bill also uses ARPA dollars to support an interagency health equity team under the Office of Health Equity to make annual recommendations for the next three years to improve access to, and the quality of, culturally competent mental health services.