Traditionally, separate health care providers and facilities addressed medical care or mental health care. Going to the hospital or doctor’s office for physical illness or injuries is the commonly recognized path while behavioral health professionals and community mental health agencies (CMHs) aid in social, emotional and mental health. However, because mental health and physical health intertwine and affect one another, many of Michigan’s hospitals and CMHs collaborate to ensure all health care needs for a patient are met. 

Lauren LaPine“In Michigan, our hospital members work with community mental health agencies on a daily basis all the time to make sure that patients that come to the emergency department for behavioral health care are getting the care that they need, where and when they need it,” says Lauren LaPine,  Michigan Health and Hospital Association’s (MHA) senior director of legislative and public policy. 

Representing all community hospitals in Michigan, MHA is committed to achieving better care for individuals, better health for populations, and lower per-capita costs. Fostering collaboration between  hospitals, CMHs, and other behavioral health providers is one way that MHA achieves this purpose. Creating a more integrated and responsive system of care for individuals with behavioral health needs benefits hospitals and CMHs as well as the people they serve.
  
“Behavioral health and mental health has been a focus of the MHA strategic action plan for the last three years — and that really puts an added focus on the work of the association to improve behavioral health,” says LaPine. “We're waiting to hear how some of those partnerships between the CMHs and the hospitals are going.”

Trinity Health Grand Rapids Hospital and Network180 came together to open a behavioral health crisis center in June 2024. Architect's rendering of the space.

Partnerships for health

With a $3 million dollar grant provided by MHA, Holland Hospital Behavioral Health Services added two licensed psychiatric beds. While two beds may not sound like much, they will provide increased access to critical mental health care for an additional 100 patients each year while keeping those patients close to home.

“The legislature appropriated $50 million for expanding inpatient site capacity statewide,” says LaPine. “That funding went to MDHHS [Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS], and MDHHS was kind enough to come to us and say, ‘Okay, your members are the hospitals. Can you help us distribute the funding?’ And that's how we were able to do that.”

In Kent County, Trinity Health Grand Rapids Hospital and Network180, a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC), have come together to open a behavioral health crisis center. This partnership has established a crisis stabilization unit within the hospital, which also  provides some clinical staff for the unit.
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“Also in West Michigan, we have Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services. They are a very large behavioral health provider and a member of the MHA. They partner really intensely with a number of the community mental health agencies across the state,” says LaPine. “Because Pine Rest has some of the greatest capacity to provide behavioral health services across the state, they are getting a lot of patients from different areas of the state, whether that be the Upper Peninsula, Detroit, or Ann Arbor.”

Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services partners with Corewell Health in the Collaborative for Behavioral Health in West Michigan. The two health care leaders work to identify behavioral health issues within the community and collaborate to fix these issues. 

In Midland, LaPine says that  MyMichigan Health is looking to partner with Community Mental Health for Central Michigan through its prepaid inpatient health plan to establish an intensive outpatient program, particularly for children. Because it is a part of University of Michigan Health, MyMichigan Health expands access, quality, and levels of care provided for patients who live in the 25-county region it serves.

Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services partners with Corewell Health in the Collaborative for Behavioral Health.

Overcoming the obstacles

Despite the many successful collaborations among Michigan’s hospitals and CMHs, many obstacles exist — a massive funding gap, a health care workforce shortage, and long wait times in emergency departments, to name a few. These obstacles make it challenging to implement new collaborative programs or services during a time where the need for behavioral health care is very high. To reduce emergency department wait times, the MHA proposed legislation, SB 806 “the three-hour bill,” that would substantially reduce wait times and provide service sooner by allowing clinically qualified staff to conduct pre-admission screenings for patients seeking care in a hospital emergency department.

“What we've proposed in our piece of legislation is, in the event that a community mental health agency cannot see a patient within that three-hour time frame, we would like the clinician that's working in the emergency department to be able to provide that assessment, get paid for providing that assessment, and start the process to make sure the patient can get connected to care,” says LaPine. 

While waiting to see if the bill will pass, Michigan’s hospitals and CMHs continue to create  partnerships. 

“There's definitely no perfect collaboration or a perfect partnership,” says LaPIne. “But there's always room for us to learn and to identify what's not working, where there are barriers, and try to work through those so that we can make sure that patients are receiving really good care.”

Monique Bedford is an aspiring journalist, currently freelancing for Issue Media Group publications. She graduated from Oakland University in fall of 2022 with a bachelor's degree in journalism and a minor in Spanish. Monique has experience in solutions journalism, media design, and hosting a radio show. When she's not writing, you can always find her studying different cultures and languages, reading her favorite newspaper, The New York Times, and spending quality time with her friends and family.

Photo of Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services by John Russell.
Masthead and list photo by Alex Green via Pexels.com
Other photos courtesy subjects.

The MI Mental Health series highlights the opportunities that Michigan's children, teens, and adults of all ages have to find the mental health help they need, when and where they need it. It is made possible with funding from the Community Mental Health Association of Michigan, Center for Health and Research Transformation, LifeWays, Michigan Health and Hospital Association, Northern Lakes CMH Authority, OnPoint, Sanilac County CMH, Summit Pointe, and Washtenaw County CMH.