Rural Workforce Insights — Behavioral Health

As America’s hospitals increasingly address behavioral health challenges concerns over the inadequate supply of behavioral health professionals and services are heightened in both urban and rural settings. The healthcare system needs to create a much stronger continuum of behavioral health care services including primary care physician, psychologists, therapists and trained emergency medicine. Discover how rural healthcare systems are addressing behavioral health and workforce priorities. Discover more about the state of behavioral workforce and steps to expand the behavioral health capabilities of your workforce from the AHA Conference.


Addressing behavioral health in rural healthcare is a challenge and bringing the community together outside of the hospital is a great step to addressing this challenge. With a shortage of providers with behavioral health expertise, healthcare organizations need to assess how they can incorporate all of the qualified professionals in their system to address patient’s behavioral health needs.


Beyond incorporating all possible qualified professionals in treating patients with behavioral health needs, it is imperative to train and develop primary care physicians on behavioral health. Additionally, looking into technology solutions, such as telehealth modalities, can aim to serve behavioral health needs across communities and regions.