As state policymakers and media outlets scrutinize Colorado’s mental health system, the head of a trade group representing 17 community mental health centers is calling for an audit. 

The CEO of the Colorado Behavioral Healthcare Council, which advocates for the community clinics across the state, wants an audit not just of those 17 centers but the entire behavioral health system. 

“We need to make the system much more accessible and we need to break down some of these barriers,” Doyle Forrestal said.

Her request comes as community mental health centers, the safety-net system for those with Medicaid or without insurance, are at the heart of an intense conversation about Colorado’s “broken mental health system.” 

They were the subject of an in-depth Colorado News Collaborative report that revealed the centers, which receive $437 million in tax dollars per year, are treating thousands fewer patients now than before the pandemic began and that some people in dire need of care are slipping through the cracks. And the centers were the subject of a subsequent letter to Gov. Jared Polis from statewide mental health advocates that asked the governor to “take action to address serious problems,” including a lack of transparency and the centers’ “failures to serve Coloradans with greatest needs.”

Read the rest of this story here at The Colorado Sun.