Priorities
Where the alliance is focused.
Four areas of policy work, drawn from where Colorado's behavioral-health system most needs durable attention. Each is a multi-year effort developed across sectors — not a campaign, not a single bill.
01
Financing stabilization
Stabilize behavioral-health financing through efficiency, accountability, and durable funding.
02
Healthcare integration
Align behavioral and physical health in Medicaid so people don't fall between systems.
03
Task Force completion
Finish the BH Task Force agenda — and address what was left undone.
04
Civil-rights gaps
Close the civil-rights gaps in Colorado's treatment of people with mental health disorders.
Priority 01
Stabilize the financing of behavioral health.
Colorado spends more than a billion dollars a year on behavioral health, but the financing is scattered across departments, the contracts duplicate one another, and the incentives don't always reward the care that actually helps. The alliance is working with state agencies and member organizations on a more efficient, more accountable, and more durable financing model — one that funds outcomes instead of paperwork.
Strategies in this pillar
- 01
Create contractual, rate-setting, and regulatory requirements and incentives that encourage providers to align services around state priorities — rather than creating new narrow programs that don't improve quality of care and inhibit system cost-effectiveness.
- 02
Partner with HCPF and the RAEs to identify places where policy changes related to utilization management, provider networks, and value-based incentives can improve efficiency and quality of care.
- 03
Identify strategies to ensure basic consumer protection in high-risk service sectors — Recovery Housing, drinking-and-driving services, and out-of-state corporate residential 'rehabilitation' — that extend beyond or work in tandem with state licensing.
- 04
Identify statutory requirements that increase costs or stigma and brainstorm alternative strategies to address public safety, such as Out-of-State Offender requirements in SUD treatment.
- 05
Review all state-funded behavioral-health services scattered across departments and consolidate into a systemic approach — identifying funding lines that don't serve people well or that create duplicative or conflicting clinical and quality standards, and replacing them with more efficient and effective approaches.
- 06
Partner with state policy and financing agencies to reform behavioral-health system budgeting and financing policies — balancing changing priorities, opportunity for innovation, and stewardship of state and local funding.
- 07
Collaborate with policymakers and government officials to implement reforms that extend beyond single budget years, election cycles, or administrations — and that lend continuity to efforts to improve the state's behavioral-health system.
Financing is where good intentions go to die. Stabilize the dollar, simplify the contract, align the incentive — and the rest of the system can actually breathe. Without that, every other reform is just paint on a leaking wall.
Priority 02
Integrate behavioral and physical health.
When a person walks into a primary-care office, they should be able to talk about their depression with the same provider, in the same visit, paid for by the same system. Today they often can't. The alliance is advancing alignment of payment and management approaches across physical and behavioral health, especially in Medicaid.
Strategies in this pillar
- 01
Advance the alignment of payment and management approaches across physical and behavioral health care — aiming to simplify access to care and increase the efficiency of service systems.
- 02
Analyze the opportunities to further align physical and behavioral health through the RAEs, BHAOs, and commercial insurance.
- 03
Identify the situations and approaches where expanded use of managed-care principles can improve access and quality — and work with advocates, legislators, and other stakeholders to implement those principles thoughtfully.
Integration isn't a slogan — it's whether a person showing up at a primary-care office gets to talk about their depression in the same visit, with the same system paying for it. The Alliance is helping translate that lived reality into policy that can actually hold.
Priority 03
Finish the BH Task Force agenda.
Colorado's Behavioral Health Task Force did real work several years ago. Some of its recommendations got implemented. Others stalled. The alliance is mapping which is which — and identifying the statutory, budget, and regulatory changes still needed to fully implement the planned reform.
Strategies in this pillar
- 01
Identify opportunities to streamline funding to behavioral health that falls in other departments or divisions within the BHA.
- 02
Analyze the opportunities to further align the work of RAEs and BHAOs.
- 03
Analyze audit, data, and regulatory requirements and identify places where duplication or inefficiencies exist that inhibit quality or efficiency of care.
- 04
Push for a big-picture approach to provider licensing that focuses on quality of care and meaningful accountability.
- 05
Propose an alternative to the entitlement-based approach to safety-net services — instead rewarding providers for efficiently serving more people and serving those with complicated needs.
The Behavioral Health Task Force did real work. The question now is which recommendations got finished and which stalled — and the Alliance is the rare place where you can actually map that, sector by sector, without flinching.
Priority 04
Close the civil-rights gaps.
Colorado's treatment of people with mental health disorders — particularly those determined incompetent to proceed, those leaving the state hospital, and Spanish-speaking individuals receiving competency services — has systemic civil-rights gaps. The alliance is working with Disability Law Colorado and partner agencies on durable solutions.
Strategies in this pillar
- 01
Partner with Disability Law Colorado to identify strategies to expand access to treatment and outpatient certification, when appropriate, for individuals transitioning from the state hospitals.
- 02
Redefine the role of Comprehensive Safety Net Providers to deliver appropriate-intensity mental-health treatment to individuals determined incompetent to proceed and those ready to leave mental-health hospitals — particularly the state hospitals.
- 03
Partner with the Department of Human Services, Office of Community and Forensic Services, on an alternative plan to a state-run Assisted Outpatient Program (AOT) — addressing the need for intensive treatment, oversight, and certification through Comprehensive Safety Net Providers and other community providers, with the accountability required under the consent decree related to competency services.
- 04
Identify weaknesses in Colorado's involuntary behavioral-health treatment system and work with key stakeholders to strengthen laws that balance individual rights and public safety.
- 05
Expand the use of Spanish-language peer support and case-management services for individuals who are monolingual in Spanish and receiving competency services.
Civil rights in behavioral health isn't a side conversation — it's a measure of whether the system is functioning at all. The Alliance brought it to the front of the agenda where it belongs. That alone is worth the room.
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