HB 718 Introduced – Establishing QMH & Certified Peer Support Credentials

After years of advocacy and collaboration with Ohio Council members and community partners, Ohio House Bill 718, “Revising the Chemical Dependency Professionals Board & Duties” has been introduced. This proposed legislation would transition Certified Peer Supporter credentialing to a professional licensing board as proposed by the administration during the last budget process and establish a 3-tiered Qualified Mental Health credential with clearly defined training, education, and scope of practice.  The Ohio Chemical Dependency Professionals Board name would be changed to the “Behavioral Health Professionals Board” (BHPB), and would require BHPB to certify both, Certified Peer Supporters (CPS) and Qualified Mental Health (QMH) Professionals, while making other changes to the laws governing the Board and the professional classifications it currently regulates.

The proposed QMH and CPS certifications seek to improve patient protections by codifying scopes of practice and ethical guidelines for practice and bring an added sense of professionalism for more than 21,000 paraprofessionals already delivering behavioral-health related services across Ohio. The provisions would streamline processes for certification and establish professional competencies to deliver care, while also addressing current behavioral health workforce shortages by creating new degree and non-degree pathways into a career in behavioral health. The credential is portable across employment sites and reduces training and retraining experiences each time the individual changes employers, which will result in reduced training and onboarding costs for community behavioral health providers, as newly hired QMH credentialed individuals will have a base level of experience, training, and education consistent with the requirements of the credential that is travels with them across employment sites.

Notably, HB 718 will directly respond to Ohio’s current Mental Health Professional shortage, by creating new opportunities to attract and recruit individuals into the mental health job sector. The QMH tiered credentialling structure creates a pathway for growth and development that is important in job retention. It opens new opportunities to create career tech programs, apprenticeships, and career development initiatives specifically in the mental health sector that have been limited due to the lack of a viable credential below the master’s degree level; and aligns with 8-out of-22 goals in the Department of Behavioral Health’s (formerly the Ohio Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services) Behavioral Health Workforce Roadmap, which outlined 22 initiatives to implement by 2027 to address Ohio’s current BH workforce needs; and is directly responsive to Prioritized Initiative #11, “Add licensure capabilities for those with a 4-year psychology or sociology degree” and Prioritized Initiative #15, “Develop certifications that can be achieved by starting into the behavioral health field at the career center level in high school”.

The Ohio Council will be actively supporting this legislation as it moves through the committee and public hearing processes and will keep members informed of any developments or opportunities to provide testimony. We would like to sincerely thank all our members who contributed thoughts and feedback regarding this proposed legislation over many years of engagement. We would not have reached this new milestone without your partnership, expertise, and commitment to strengthening our profession and improving lives.