FY 2026 CCBHC Grant Preparation
Frequently Asked Questions About CCBHC Implementation
Before you apply, make sure your team has clarity on eligibility pathways, Medicaid PPS, required services, and the reporting infrastructure you will need after award.
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Watch: 20 CCBHC Implementation Questions: Eligibility, Medicaid PPS, Required Services, CQI & More
Questions Covered in This Video
These are the questions we hear most often from organizations evaluating the FY26 CCBHC opportunity.
What are the two CCBHC grant pathways?
Planning Development & Implementation (PDI) for new applicants, and Improvement & Advancement (IA) for existing CCBHCs seeking to expand.
What are the nine required service categories?
Crisis services, screening/assessment, person-centered planning, outpatient mental health, outpatient substance use, peer support, psychiatric rehabilitation, targeted case management, and primary care screening are offered. They are required to provide at least 5 of these 9 services, excluding crisis. For the remaining services, an established designated collaborating organization can provide them, but this organization must be a licensed mental health and SUD provider in their state.
What does 'unduplicated client count' mean for eligibility?
The requirement is to serve at least 200 unduplicated clients annually.
When should we start building our CQI infrastructure?
Before the grant begins. Organizations that wait until after award often struggle with data collection, reporting timelines, and demonstrating early outcomes.
What is the Medicaid PPS rate and why does it matter?
The Prospective Payment System (PPS) rate reflects the actual cost of providing CCBHC services. It serves as the financial foundation that sustains the model beyond grant funding. Depending on the state, there is potential to access this funding if the state eventually chooses to opt in.
How do I complete the Community Needs Assessment?
The CNA must demonstrate unmet behavioral health needs in your service area using quantitative data, community input, and analysis of existing service gaps.
What performance measures are required?
SAMHSA uses this metric to determine your organization's capacity tier, which influences your funding and reporting needs. They require CCBHC to report 10 CCBHC-specific metrics, though this does not cover any additional state-specific metrics that may also have to be reported.
What are the most common implementation mistakes?
Before the grant begins. Organizations that wait until after award often struggle with data collection, reporting timelines, and demonstrating early outcomes.
Full Lifecycle Support
Our Impact
Improving Access to Care: During a CCBHC implementation, performance monitoring identified lower-than-expected enrollment among one priority population. By working with the program team to understand the underlying barrier, outreach strategies were adjusted to increase awareness and improve access to services.
Strengthening Program Retention: Evaluation findings revealed that women were leaving a behavioral health program at higher rates than expected. Those insights informed the design of a more family-centered approach that incorporated childcare into future programming.
Rapid Performance Improvement: Through a rapid-cycle feedback process, one behavioral health organization increased its reassessment completion rate from 36% to 81% in less than one month. The process not only improved compliance but also established a system for reviewing reassessment results to support measurement-based care and continuous quality improvement.
Building Data Capacity: Through California's Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, BHODS supported learning collaboratives and technical assistance that helped more than 400 behavioral health organizations strengthen their data collection, reporting, and performance improvement capacity.
Federal Recognition: Include a client testimonial section highlighting feedback received from a SAMHSA Government Project Officer after reviewing a progress report we supported:
"I am writing to notify you that I have completed my review of the mid-year progress report. The report was extremely well written and the amount of work accomplished in the first six months is truly astounding. Thank you for your dedication to this grant and your community at large." — SAMHSA Government Project Officer
Read Article:
SAMHSA FY 2026 CCBHC Grants: What You Need to Know
A breakdown of the FY26 opportunity focused on sustainable implementation and CQI.