Over the last several decades, information has been collected from health professionals during online license renewal. In 2018, Senate Enrolled Act 223 identified selected pieces of information (including educational and practice characteristics) as critical to the state of Indiana. Beginning in 2019, it will now be required for health professionals to provide this information when they renew their license.
In 2017 all Behavioral Health Specialists who biennially renewed their license electronically were invited to complete this voluntary Behavioral Health Board Survey Instrument administered by the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency (IPLA). The data used for the 2018 Behavioral Health and Human Services Data Report were extracted from the survey data from these files provided by IPLA through the Indiana State Department of Health
The following recommendations for Indiana’s Addiction Counselor Workforce were generated as a result of findings within this report, including: review and analysis of licensure data, state statute & rules, a literature review on occupational regulation, stakeholder engagement, and national environmental scan. Recommendations represent the synthesis of the information presented throughout the report.
To provide public comment on this document, please email comment to the Bowen Center at bowenctr@iu.edu. Public comment will be uploaded to this homepage and Bowen Staff may publish responses to commentary.
The State of Indiana recognizes the importance of strengthening and retaining the behavioral health workforce in order to 1) tackle the opioid epidemic and 2) expand the workforce to areas in greatest need of mental health care. Financial incentives focused on workforce recruitment and/or retention are frequently used as a strategy to increase workforce capacity, reduce turnover, and reduce burnout. Student loan repayment assistance programs are one such strategy. These programs generally offer professionals relief from the administrative and economic stress of repaying student debt in exchange for practicing in underserved areas or with underserved populations for a specified time period.
In 2014, the Indiana Family and Social Services Division of Mental Health and Addiction (DMHA) implemented a Mental Health and Addiction Services Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) targeting behavioral health professionals. The Bowen Center for Health Workforce Research and Policy (Bowen Center) was contracted by DMHA to perform an evaluation of the LRAP. The primary objectives of the evaluation were to 1) identify successful outcomes associated with the program and 2) determine areas in need of improvement. The following report describes the evaluation methods, discusses results, identifies successes, and offers recommendations for future program improvement