Hiring challenges for mental health provider

Socorro Mental Health, 1200 Highway 60, Socorro

Attracting and retaining workers in Socorro County has been a challenge for Socorro Mental Health, which often leaves vacant positions. This can mean people wait longer for an appointment, because there are fewer providers available.

“I feel like the community gets really frustrated because they can’t get an appointment. We’d love to get everybody in, but we can only do what we have staff to do, and our staff work so hard. These people come in every single hour of the day,” said Deborah Bankson, clinical services administrator for Presbyterian Medical Services sites in Socorro and Catron counties.

Some of the challenges that make it difficult to find staff are finding people who want to live in Socorro. Often new hires will take the job and plan to commute from Los Lunas or Albuquerque.

“They start by saying, oh I don’t mind the drive. After you’re driving a year, they mind the drive,” said Bankson.

Medicare reimburses for licensed behavioral health therapists, and it is difficult to hire and retain qualified behavioral health therapists, said Bankson. She believes this is a challenge all over the state, not just in Socorro, but, “Socorro has a lot of strength it’s just not showing well right now,” she said.

“People want to be where there’s things to do, where there’s art down in the square, cafes, restaurants, music. We have trouble attracting our medical staff. We have trouble attracting licensed behavioral health clinicians,” said Bankson.

Another barrier is the reimbursement rate for councilors. Prescribing psychologist John Courtney believes that unless government and managed care offer better salaries and incentives for mental health providers, hiring will continue to be an issue.

“Unless you make it more attractive for people to come to this field and stay in the field and stay working for agencies like this, we’re going to continue to have a dearth of people who are willing to come and work in communities like Socorro,” said Courtney.

A therapist position at Socorro Community Health Center is open. That therapist does brief interventions for people who score significantly on a healthy living questionnaire. Socorro Mental Health is also trying to recruit a psychosocial rehab instructor.

“That program is so powerful, that if you have a full-time person doing that, there are large groups of people that can go into those kinds of treatment programs and I tell you, they get better,” said Courtney.

Courtney’s new intakes are booking out three months, so it would also be helpful to have an additional prescribing psychologist.

Showing Up

Socorro Mental Health’s front desk has a backup list for people who’d like to be called sooner than their appointment if space opens up. This is because every day people do not show up for behavioral health services.

Mental health issues like depression can make it hard for people to motivate themselves to show up for appointments and cancellations are frequent.

“In a sense the pandemic exposed a barrier, but PMS was really quick to respond to it in a fashion that was really consistent with what everyone else did too,” said Courtney

Telephonic visits and video visits were added to allow patients access to providers during the pandemic.

Significantly more patients started keeping their appointments when telephonic and video visits were added.

“I went from days where I might have 50 to 60 percent show rate to ninety plus percent show rates,” said Courtney.

It looks like the video and telephonic visits will continue to be available as insurance companies and government seem willing to continue reimbursing for those services.