Shared Public Policy Agenda

We believe everyone in our region can access the quality behavioral health care they need because its workforce reflects the communities it serves, is culturally and linguistically competent, and can meet everyone’s behavioral health needs. To achieve that shared vision, we need to advocate for change in attitudes, beliefs, behavior, and policies, and mobilize public officials to push for such change that supports the rapid growth of a quality behavioral health workforce.

Our policy advocacy is most effective when we work together as a network to build a majority of support among policy-makers.

Policy Priorities

Increase funding and incentives to
attract and retain the workforce.

Behavioral health providers must be compensated at a level reflecting their demand within the health care system. The pandemic exacerbated the need for behavioral health providers across all disciplines. However, Medicaid and non-Medicaid funded program reimbursement rates have not kept pace, creating a financing shortfall and making it impossible for employers to invest in the wage and benefit increases necessary to retain their existing workforce or hire as necessary to meet expanded needs. (HMA, 2021)

  • Promote continued investment in the behavioral health workforce through sustained reimbursement rate increases that enable employers to supply the behavioral health care services needed in Ohio communities.

    • Support annual Medicaid rate increases to continue closing the gap between reimbursement structure and market, and ensures providers receive increased reimbursement from managed care organizations.

    • Strengthen parity laws and enforcement strategies across public and private payers.

    • Ensure more behavioral health certifications and licenses are eligible to bill as behavioral health providers.

  • Support scholarships and other incentives, such as tuition reimbursement and student loan support that address diversity and equity shortfalls in under-resourced communities to build the behavioral health workforce that reflect the communities they serve.

Address licensing barriers to
behavioral health professions.

Removing barriers to behavioral health professions is necessary to grow the workforce. Strategies should include examining licensing or certification requirements. The tension between the need to ensure safety and quality in behavioral healthcare and the need to ensure enough providers is a persistent issue in the field of behavioral health. To address this issue would require focused, structured engagement between regulators and the licensee community.

  • Update trainee licensing policies and practices that reduce barriers to licensure.

  • Reduce barriers for applicants pursuing multiple behavioral health credentials, such as long timelines to receive specialized credentials.

  • Expand and incentivize supervision programs to ensure license applicants have the supervision needed to meet their requirements.

    • Structure funding to promote new models of supervision that expand the types of occupations and qualifications required to provide post-graduate supervision for independent practice.

  • Simplify licensure requirements for established professionals moving to Ohio.

    • Reduce the number of supervised hours required for licensure where requirements are above standards needed to maintain quality of care.

    • Promote joining compacts that will help Ohio align licensure standards around a common, agreed-upon set of requirements as a means to support licensure reciprocity legislation.

Improve the quality, transparency and
availability of workforce data.

Understanding the gaps and shortages in the behavioral health workforce is one of the first steps to identifying how to address the workforce challenges. Evaluating barriers to recruitment and retention is also key. To effectively support communities, Ohio must enact legislation aimed at collecting data across various groups. This is important to inform workforce development strategies by breaking down silos between agencies, developing resources and tools to ensure consistent data collection, and identifying trusted entities to house data collected. (NCSL, 2023) Collecting this data can also help policymakers and stakeholders make informed decisions on how best to address the behavioral health needs in Ohio communities.

  • Evaluate the classification of behavioral health positions against what has been cataloged in Bureau of Labor Statistics documents and advocate for change that will align these classifications and improve data collection.

  • Assess the impact of current supervision requirements on the ability to meet our region’s needs in the size, distribution, and availability of select occupations in the behavioral health workforce.

  • Collect and use data to understand behavioral health workforce needs related to race and ethnicity.