Today, we announced who will handle behavioral health care in Arizona except for Maricopa County starting in July.  Northern Arizona Behavioral Health Authority, Cenpatico Behavioral Health of Arizona, and Community Partnership of Southern Arizona won the contracts.

We’re excited about the content in these new contracts.  They are taking consumer choice and voice to a new level by including specific and measurable touchstones that drive home the recovery model

Every 3 to 5 years, the ADHS goes out to bid to find contractors to act as our Regional & Tribal Behavioral Health Authorities (RBHAs and TRBHAs) to deliver behavioral health services across the state.  RBHAs and TRBHAs contract with a network of service providers to deliver behavioral health care services, including behavioral health prevention programs for adults and children, services for adults with substance abuse and general mental health disorders, adults with serious mental illness, and children with serious emotional disturbance.

Since we’re in our 5th year of our contracts with all of the contractors (except for Magellan, our contractor in Maricopa County), we released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for each of the service areas outside of Maricopa County in October 2009.  Since then, the procurement process has progressed through each of the required phases of the decision making process, and the awards for the next contract period were announced today.  You can see the award announcement in our media release today.

A special thanks go out to our Procurement team and all of the folks that were involved in the review and evaluation process.  The procurement process is rigorous and demanding, and our team did a very good job crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s to make sure that the whole process was done by the book.  Thank you.