42 U.S.C. § 290aa–17 — Assisted outpatient treatment grant program for individuals with serious mental illness

(a) The program. The Secretary must set up a grant program that awards no more than 50 grants each year to help eligible groups run assisted outpatient treatment programs for people with serious mental illness. (b) Who the Secretary consults. The Secretary runs this program in consultation with the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, the Attorney General, the Administrator of the Administration for Community Living, and the Administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (c) Picking grantees. The Secretary may only give grants to applicants that have never run an assisted outpatient treatment program before. The Secretary judges applicants by how well their program could cut hospitalization, homelessness, incarceration, and contact with the criminal justice system, while improving patients' health and social outcomes. (d) What the grant must fund. Any program funded by this grant must evaluate its patients' medical and social needs. It must prepare and carry out treatment plans that set criteria for finishing court-ordered treatment and that monitor whether patients follow the plan, including taking their medication. It must provide case management services that support the treatment plan. It must make sure patients get properly referred to medical and social service providers. It must evaluate how the program is being run, to make sure it fits patients' needs and follows state law. And it must measure treatment outcomes, including rates of incarceration, how much health care patients use, and homelessness. (e) Reporting. By the end of fiscal year 2023, and every two years after that, the Secretary must report to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Each report must cover cost savings and public health outcomes like death rates, suicide, substance abuse, hospitalization, and service use; incarceration rates among patients; homelessness rates among patients; how satisfied patients and families are; and how the people served compare, demographically, to the overall population where the grantee operates. (f) Definitions. "Assisted outpatient treatment" means mental health treatment a doctor prescribes for a patient who keeps living in the community, ordered under a state or local law that lets a court require this. An "eligible entity" is a county, city, mental health system, mental health court, or any other group with legal authority under state law to run, monitor, and oversee these programs. "Secretary" means the Secretary of Health and Human Services. (g) Funding. A single grant cannot exceed $1,000,000 for any of fiscal years 2023 through 2027; the Secretary sets the exact amount based on the size of the population served, including the estimated number of patients. Congress authorized $22,000,000 for each of those years to fund this program.