West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) Bureau for Behavioral Health and Health Facilities (BBHHF)

Comprehensive redesign of the West Virginia behavioral health system with recommendations for both programmatic and fiscal reform.

The West Virginia legislature mandated a study of its behavioral health system in 2006 to receive recommendations for short and long-term strategies to develop a more effective, higher quality, and more cost efficient system of behavioral healthcare. PCG Health™ was hired to perform a comprehensive analysis of the current behavioral health system and make recommendations that could produce more consumer-driven outcomes.

A key component of this project was to work closely with BBHHF staff and others within and outside DHHR to realign spending with innovation and quality services to create a more consumer-driven, selfdirected, and family-centered system that focuses on recover and resiliency models of care.

Some key findings of the PCG Health report:

• West Virginia’s rural and mountainous geography generates barriers to behavioral health service delivery because of unmet transportation, technology, housing and communication needs.
• West Virginia’s two state psychiatric hospitals, Sharpe and Bateman, have witnessed increasing capacity and average length of stay numbers within the past decade and therefore should conduct an inpatient bed demand study to identify those individuals ready for discharge or transition from the hospitals
• West Virginia’s quality management and data collection capabilities could be enhanced through the addition of new technologies, more collaborative partnerships and the assistance of consumer and family feedback to improve the identification of needs gaps and the faster remediation of improvement areas.