On October 21, OhioMHAS hosted a Behavioral Health Workforce Supply and Demand Webinar. During the webinar, the Department shared that they completed a Needs Assessment Study assessing Ohio's behavioral health landscape and presented on their findings.
Through the project, the Department assessed the current and anticipated behavioral health landscape in the state across multiple factors including geography, practitioner types, and patient demographics. Through collecting and comparing all of this data, OhioMHAS, with the help of several state partners, including InnovateOhio and ODM, identified where variance in workforce supply and demand exist.
Comparison of the datasets from CY2013-2019 identifies the varying levels of met/unmet demand throughout the state and identifies how this variance is spread across practitioner types. As of CY2019 overall unmet demand for behavioral health services is between 41-46%.
Only Cuyahoga, Franklin, and Allen counties showed a surplus of practitioners while all others showed a workforce deficit. This surplus however, is driven by peers and LPN/RNs, demonstrating the importance of analyzing practitioner deficit/surplus by individual practitioner types and counties.
OhioMHAS identified several next steps. The results of the assessment have already been posted here. The Department is also in the process of creating an interactive, public-facing workforce dashboard that will allow individuals to search for information by county, ADAMH board, Medicaid demand levels, and more. They also plan to continue updating the data to maintain relevancy.
The Department is also developing a multi-agency behavioral health workforce advisory team to create policy recommendations based on the findings of report.
The workforce webinar and slides have been posted to the MHAS website here: https://mha.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/mha/about-us/priorities/workforce