How County Elected Officials Can Support Crisis Triage Centers: A Place for Community Members to Go During a Behavioral Health Emergency
Upcoming Events
Related News
County elected officials can support community members during a behavioral health emergency by increasing access to services such as crisis triage centers. These centers offer residents a physical location to access stabilization, treatment and connections to community-based services. By increasing access to crisis triage centers, counties can serve the needs of community members with behavioral health conditions, reserve emergency departments and law enforcement officers for other priorities and direct resources to improve community well-being.
County elected officials can assist by:
- Determining the need, through resource and process mapping to understand if a crisis triage center is appropriate
- Ensuring collaboration across county agencies and community partners to best serve residents through integrated care, and
- Securing funding from federal, state, local and private sources to develop a center and sustain operations.
CMS requires state Medicaid suspension upon arrest versus termination
Effective January 1, 2026, federal law now requires states to suspend, rather than terminate, Medicaid coverage when an individual is incarcerated.
ICE hiring surge challenges county law enforcement
Local governments hope that their law enforcement personnel will favor the familiarity of the communities they serve when weighing potentially lucrative immigration enforcement recruitment bonuses, which may require them to uproot their lives.
States submit Rural Health Transformation Program funding applications
On December 29, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced $50 billion in awards over 5 years to all 50 states under the Rural Health Transformation Program.
CMS issues new guidance on Medicaid Community Engagement Requirements
On December 8, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a Medicaid and CHIP Services Informational Bulletin (CIB) directing states on how to implement the Medicaid community engagement requirements enacted under Section 71119 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act legislation (Public Law 119-21), or H.R. 1.
California county sales tax measure backfills federal healthcare cuts
Santa Clara County, Calif. will raise an estimated $330 million each year from a sales tax to backfill lose Medicaid funding.
