Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHC)

CCBHCs are specially designed clinics that provide a comprehensive range of mental health and substance use services. CCBHCs serve anyone who walks through their doors, regardless of diagnosis or insurance status. CCBHCs must meet certification criteria and must provide or coordinate nine core services, including:

• Crisis mental health services including 24-hour mobile crisis teams, emergency crisis intervention, and crisis stabilization.
• Screening, assessment, and diagnosis including risk assessment.
• Patient-Centered treatment planning or similar processes, including risk assessment and crisis planning.
• Outpatient mental health and substance use services.
• Outpatient clinic primary care screening and monitoring of key health indicators and health risk.
• Targeted case management.
• Psychiatric rehabilitation services.
• Peer support, counseling services, and family support services.
• Intensive community-based mental health care for members of the armed forces & veterans.

The wide array of CCBHC standards and requirements include:

• Getting people into care quickly.
• Ensuring access to 24/7 crisis services.
• Serving anyone who walks through the doors, regardless of diagnosis or insurance status.
• Providing care coordination to help people navigate behavioral health care, physical health care, social services, and other needs.

Using the CCBHC Planning Grant, Iowa HHS issued a Request for Proposal for organizations to apply who were interested in being certified by the State of Iowa as a CCBHC. Successful bidders were announced in the following Letter of Intent to Award. 

In March 2024, Iowa HHS submitted an application to SAMHSA to be included in the 2024 CCBHC Demonstration. Iowa certified CCBHCs will be eligible for an alternative reimbursement for certain behavioral health services under a cost-based Prospective Payment System (PPS). 

As part of the work for the Planning Grant and to gather feedback from many different perspectives for the State’s application for the 2024 CCBHC Demonstration, Iowa HHS convened a Stakeholder Engagement Committee to assess and guide Iowa’s work. You can find materials and recordings from past meetings on the CCBHC Stakeholder Engagement Committee webpage.

In 2023, Iowa HHS provided general training and technical assistance to educate CCBHC stakeholders and the general public about aspects of the CCBHC Demonstration. Please see below links for access to training materials and recordings

• CCBHC Demonstration Requirements: Federal Expectations
• CLAS Standards and Culturally Responsive Care
• CCBHC Community Needs Assessments
• Specialty Populations

It is important to note that Iowa already has many providers who are self-certified as CCBHCs through SAMHSA’s provider grant program. These providers are known as CCBHC Expansion Grantees. They have received time limited grants from SAMHSA to support implementation of the CCBHC model in their organizations. This self-certification process is separate from the Iowa HHS state certification process. Organizations that have been awarded Expansion Grants do not automatically qualify as state certified CCBHCs. 

The CCBHC initiative is already the most significant investment ever made into sustaining and expanding behavioral healthcare in the United States. CCBHCs seek to transform behavioral healthcare delivery in communities with a consistent focus on ensuring access to high-quality, coordinated, community-based behavioral health services built on a strong foundation of evidence-based practice and integration of physical health care services.

To deliver on our transformative goals, Iowa HHS is actively working across divisions, with multiple state departments and with stakeholders. Activities have focused on developing Iowa’s state specific CCBHC certification processes and requirements, material development, providing technical assistance, and planning for the operationalization of the CCBHC demonstration. Many providers who were provisionally credentialed are demonstrating readiness or near-readiness for final certification and initial guidance documents are developed.

To paraphrase Iowa HHS Director, Kelly Garcia, "Transformation is a team sport."

 Iowa passed landmark legislation to redesign the state’s behavioral health service system, including alignment and integration of current services and supports. This work includes examination and fundamental changes to funding, governance, oversight, and accountability structures. 

Because of this incredible work on both initiatives, Iowa HHS can align the launch of its new behavioral health service system and CCBHCs on July 1, 2025.

Ten providers are currently working towards state certification as a CCBHC (see map).