21 Mar Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City Recently Awarded $46,750 Grant to Comprehensive Mental Health Services, Inc. (CMHS)

Comprehensive Mental Health Services, Inc. (CMHS) recently received a grant for $46,750 from the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City to find and hire a full time psychiatrist.

Within a month after offering the position, CMHS expects the psychiatrist would start employment, complete their orientation, and start seeing clients full-time.  The psychiatrist is a crucial partner in the treatment team.  All clients needing medications are required to complete a forty-five minute evaluation session with a psychiatrist before any medications can be prescribed.  Follow-up appointments to ensure the medications are being effective and the side effects are not problematic vary between one week and four weeks later.  These appointments take about fifteen minutes each.

During 2014, 2,237 clients were seen for medication services.  A full-time psychiatrist could see 900 clients per year.  We are finding that it can take nearly four weeks from the initial appointment for our clients to get back in to see one of these staff and over four weeks to schedule a follow-up appointment.  While there currently is no waiting list, appointments in the last year were sometimes scheduled four to five months out.  The full time psychiatrist will allow CMHS to decrease initial psychiatric evaluation to only two weeks after the request and follow up appointments could be scheduled as recommended.

Comprehensive Mental Health Services, Inc. (CMHS) is a community mental health center that provides a safety net of mental health and substance abuse treatment services, prevention education, and integrated mental and primary health services for low income people in Eastern Jackson County and the Urban Core of Kansas City Missouri. CMHS is celebrating its 45^th year of serving as the mental health safety net for eastern Jackson County.