Bay Cove’s New Community Behavioral Health Center Expands Service Offerings on Cape Cod
At Bay Cove, we believe that when people need help, they should get it, and we have always been committed to meeting people where they are in order to provide that help. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Roadmap for Behavioral Health Reform is geared toward that same philosophy, with an increasing move toward offering streamlined access to both vital behavioral healthcare and critical medical healthcare services to those who need them, when and where they need them.
This commonality of mission has resulted in Bay Cove receiving an exciting new opportunity that puts us at the forefront of this new path toward easier access to behavioral healthcare, with the agency having been selected by the State to operate one of 25 new Community Behavioral Health Centers (CBHCs). These programs will expand access to routine, urgent, and crisis treatment for mental health conditions and substance use disorders, for residents across the state of Massachusetts.
On January 3, Bay Cove proudly opened The Bay Cove Behavioral Health and Wellness Center in Hyannis. This CBHC will provide coordinated services to the communities of the upper and lower Cape, where Bay Cove has already been attending to the urgent behavioral health needs of the MassHealth population for the past five years. Our work as the emergency services provider on the Cape has given us an understanding of the region’s demand for services, the community behavioral health provider landscape, and the most pressing social determinants of health needs of the people we serve
The state’s new designated CBHCs will provide same-day evaluation and referral to treatment, evening and weekend hours, timely follow-up appointments, and evidence-based behavioral health treatment, in person at community-based locations and via telehealth. The network of CBHCs will also deliver 24/7 community-based mobile crisis intervention and stabilization, as an alternative to hospital emergency departments, and will serve all ages and all communities across the Commonwealth.
Bay Cove has structured our CBHC with a keen eye toward accomplishing the stated goal of ensuring a seamless, predictable, consistent experience for individuals and families seeking behavioral health services on Cape Cod.
In a 2022 press release put out by the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, outgoing Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders stated, “A critical part of the Roadmap for Behavioral Health Reform is expanding the ‘front door’ to treatment, so Massachusetts residents can access behavioral health treatment. The Community Behavioral Health Centers will ease the burden on individuals and families when accessing treatment, ensuring readily available outpatient care in the community for people of all ages and backgrounds so that every resident can access behavioral health care.”
Of our new program, Diane Santoro, Bay Cove’s Vice President of Behavioral Health Integration, remarked “Bay Cove is looking forward to deepening our work on the Cape, and we feel certain that the service enhancements the CBHC are bringing to the region will go a long way in addressing the behavioral health challenges faced by members of the Cape Cod community.”