This project will document, through the use of qualitative interviews, the extent to which Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) are employing mental health staff nationally, understand why more RHCs are not employing specialty mental health staff, and analyze the barriers to and opportunities for the delivery of mental health services by RHCs. The results will identify opportunities and interventions to encourage RHCs to offer this important service.

The questions which frame this study include:

• How many RHCs employ specialty mental health staff and how are they distributed nationally?
• Why are more RHCs not offering these services?
• What are the characteristics of RHCs providing mental health services compared to those that do not?
• What community factors (e.g., proximity to other mental health providers or degree of rurality) and state factors (e.g., Medicaid reimbursement and behavioral managed care policies or licensure laws) may explain why some RHCs offer mental health services and others do not?
• What are the staffing patterns for mental health services?
• What barriers to offering mental health services do RHCs encounter and how are they overcome?

Publications

• Encouraging Rural Health Clinics to Provide Mental Health Services: What Are the Options?
  Maine Rural Health Research Center
  Date: 05/2010
  This study examined changes in the delivery of mental health services by rural health clinics (RHCs), their operational characteristics, barriers to the development of services, and policy options to encourage more RHCs to deliver mental health services.
• The Provision of Mental Health Services by Rural Health Clinics
  Maine Rural Health Research Center
  Date: 05/2010
  This study examined changes in the delivery of mental health services by rural health clinics (RHCs), their operational characteristics, barriers to the development of services, and policy options to encourage more RHCs to deliver mental health services.