The Louisiana Department of Health is set to greatly increase the availability of mental health providers by expanding Medicaid reimbursement eligibility to provisionally licensed mental health professionals. According to Deputy Assistant Secretary for the state Office of Behavioral Health Robyn McDermott, one of the only major differences between provisionally and fully licensed mental health professionals is supervision.

“So they [the provisionally licensed mental health professionals]’re not practicing independent of supervision,” says McDermott, “but they are providing much needed services, um, under the supervision of clinical directors.”

Over 4,000 providers in Louisiana would become eligible for reimbursement under the policy change including provisionally licensed professional counselors, marriage and family therapists and licensed master social workers. This is great news not only for the one in five Louisiana adults who live with mental illness and the one in three Louisiana adults who reported anxiety and/or depressive symptoms in 2021, but also for the state as a whole, as Louisiana ranks 35th nationally for suicide rates. McDermott says under the new plan, provisionally licensed professionals can help the 74% of people in Louisiana who have not yet had their mental health needs met.

“They are more than capable,” McDermott asserts. “You know, they’re out in the workforce now, they’ve just not traditionally been able to bill Medicaid to provide the services.”

Nationally, one in three people live in an area that doesn’t have any mental health providers. McDermott thinks increased Medicaid eligibility could help change that in Louisiana, saying, “[t]his gives folks that are in rural areas of our state and states without a whole lot of access to fully licensed clinicians access to these much needed services that they wouldn’t otherwise have.”

LHD expects the final rule to be published on July 20. If approved by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the plan will begin on August 1.