More than $17 million in new funding has been announced for rural mental health and substance use services in North Carolina, federal officials said on Wednesday, in one of the week's largest healthcare investments in underserved communities.
The announcement, from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, covers new mental health clinics and mobile crisis teams — the services designed to reach people in a behavioural-health emergency before that emergency becomes a hospital admission or a police call.
Part of the money, a $6.7 million investment highlighted in regional summaries, also supports early mental health intervention and regional crisis-response partnerships. The behavioural-health funding is one component of North Carolina's broader work under the federal Rural Health Transformation Program.
That broader program spans rural health workforce recruitment and retention, healthcare facilities and access, new care and payment models, community-based and preventive care, and healthcare technology, including school-based and mobile services and remote-care tools. For rural providers deciding whether they can keep services open, the test will be how quickly announced dollars become staffed clinics and running crisis teams.
