Oregon needs $850M to meet its behavioral health capacity needs

Oregon needs 3,714 more treatment beds for people with mental health and substance use disorders, the vast majority of those are in-patient substance use treatment beds.

"For Substance Use Disorder Residential Facilities we need to increase capacity by 166 percent, so basically doubling the current capacity," said Ebony Clarke, Behavioral Health Director for OHA during a presentation to lawmakers on Monday.

The data comes from a needs assessment the agency did in June of 2024 at the request of Oregon Governor Tina Kotek.

"Governor Kotek has had an ongoing priority specific to expanding the behavioral health capacity with preliminary efforts starting the adult system," Clarke told lawmakers.

The study shows lawmakers will need to budget approximately $170M per year over the next five years to scale up capacity to meet the population’s needs.

That’s not taking into consideration the current staffing shortages that OHA admits are causing some open beds to not be put to use.

The agency does not know how many open beds are currently not being used because of staffing shortages but the estimated cost is based on requests for information that providers have responded to statewide. Those include the cost of upstaffing for bed capacity.

The study also did not track how many beds are lacking for drug treatment and behavioral health issues among the youth. Currently, the state only has 12 behavioral health facilities for children and only two for substance use treatment.

OHA told lawmakers it is working on a dashboard that will show real-time progress in getting more behavioral health beds online and will show how far off from the goal the state is.

The needs assessment did not include a number of pending treatment beds that should become available by 2025 so the state will likely have made more progress in its goals by next year.

https://katu.com/news/local/oregon-needs-850m-to-meet-its-behavioral-health-capacity-needs

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Author: KATU News
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News post in at: September 24, 2024, 3:02 am.

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