Telehealth services at the four locations of Coal Country Community Health Center is expected to improve and expand soon thanks to a new grant and project plan that was awarded in association with the University of Minnesota. Beulah, Hazen, Center and Killdeer’s health centers will be able to add additional behavioral health staff and offer coordination of behavioral health services back to the patient’s primary care provider, according to Talitha Schnaidt, CCCHC’s director of behavioral health services.
BETTER BEHAVIOR HEALTH SERVICES COMING
New five-year telehealth grant to provide additional staff/services for CCCHC sites
By Ryan Schlehuber: Beulah Beacon Editor
The four local clinics of the Coal Country Community Health Center will soon see its staff and services expand owing to a new grant that was awarded, which was part of a subrecipient with the University of Minnesota.
CCCHC, which has clinics in Beulah, Hazen, Center and Killdeer, recently received a Northern Great Plains Next Generation Telebehavioral Health Network grant award.
The estimated annual award for the grantee is up to $350,000 that will be awarded to the University of Minnesota, according to CCCHC Assistant Director of Nursing Amber Brady.
CCCHC and Sawtooth Mountain Clinic are sub-awardees of the University of Minnesota and expected to receive $100,000 per year the grant is awarded,” she said. The performance period of the grant is Sept. 1, 2024, through Aug. 31, 2029, for a total of five years.
“We promote healthcare services that take advantage of modern telecommunications technologies such as interactive videoconferencing, secure patient portal messaging, and remote patient monitoring,” Brady said. “Our focus is to improve access to behavioral health services and the patient’s primary care provider by expanding telehealth and care coordination services.”
With the grant, CCCHC will be able to add additional behavioral health staff in our community and offer coordination of behavioral health services back to the patient’s primary care provider, according to Talitha Schnaidt, CCCHC’s director of behavioral health services.
“The goal of this project is to expand telebehavioral health services throughout the northern plains to improve access to behavioral health services,” she said. “For patients who travel great distances to a behavioral health provider or do not have transportation services available, telehealth services are a great option to receive the necessary care.”
The network project plans to increase access to integrated behavioral health services by 25% at each location, Brady said. It will also provide “same day” access to more than 80% of behavioral health patients, improve data completeness to greater than 90%, and support the addition of up to two new full-time employees in service capacity per site over the course of the project.
“This grant will help to maintain current behavioral health staff and services to support patient access to behavioral health services in our service area,” Brady said. “This will help to facilitate care coordination from behavioral health back to the patient’s primary care provider.”
Brady and Schnaidt said once the service is established, the rural originating sites of CCCHC and Sawtooth Mountain Clinic will host and refer into an immediately available (within five to 10 minutes) virtual handoff service provided via live video and/or telephone to connect patients with a trained community health worker (CHW) or provisionally licensed provider for engagement, screening, data collection and transitioning into behavioral health services. The service will include weekly follow up until regular behavioral health services can be established.
The partnership between CCCHC and the University of Minnesota stemmed from a previous telehealth presentation that Brady had done for an ATA webinar on remote patient monitoring. Mary Devaney, the associate director for gpTRAC, who also works as a project manager with the University of Minnesota, attended the webinar that Brady presented on and reached out for further collaboration.
“Through speaking with Mary about the services provided at CCCHC, we discussed the possibility of working together for a new funding opportunity through HRSA,” Brady said. “Staff at CCCHC and the University of Minnesota met virtually for a collaboration call to see if this grant opportunity could benefit our patients and the community for expanded telebehavioral health services.”
The first year of the grant is aimed at training new and existing staff on the telebehavioral health model, Brady explained, and the project will be implemented via stages of:
- Assembling leadership and planning
- Establishing the measurement regimen
- Establishing the screening and referral processes
- Establishing the handoff procedures
- Adding provisionally licensed providers
- Maintaining an ongoing monitoring and evaluation protocol.
In fall 2025, the data collection will start to take place for this project and the process of referring and managing patients will be implemented for ongoing care coordination services, Brady said.
Coal Country Community Health Center is a not-for-profit rural community health center organization located in North Dakota. The organization was incorporated in 2003 and has received uninterrupted Community Health Center funding since 2004. The CCCHC service area consists of over 4,500 square miles and is comprised of all of Dunn, Mercer, and Oliver Counties, the southern portion of McKenzie County, and the greater part of Morton County in west central North Dakota.
In addition to its administrative offices, CCCHC maintains nine health center delivery sites, including four comprehensive health centers in Beulah, Hazen, Killdeer, and Center, and five school-based clinics in the communities of Beulah, Hazen, and Killdeer.
The CCCHC staff provides comprehensive health services to its populations across the lifespan, including required preventive and primary medical care services, diagnostic and screening services, outreach, health education, disease management, behavioral health, substance use, enabling, and other services.
CCCHC contracts with area partners to allow patients access to discounted dental and specialty care services. In 2023, CCCHC provided care to 9,188 patients.
