Behavioral health facilities are facing a steep balancing act. Providing care to a sensitive, vulnerable population requires compassionate, skilled workers, but in the midst of already debilitating behavioral health staffing shortages, gaps in care are becoming more frequent.
In 2026, if facilities don’t address these issues, the current problems facing behavioral health facilities will continue: staff retention, reduced patient care, lost revenue, and even liability due to compliance issues.
Behavioral health staffing ratios
Regulations are tightening, and behavioral health is no exception. In fact, certain states are applying even more pressure on behavioral health facilities to maintain low staff-to-patient ratios.
In California, the state is looking to address gaps in staffing regulations with mandated staffing requirements. While the deadline has been delayed until June 2026, California is seeking to put a 1:6 ratio for nurses to adult patients and a 1:5 ratio of nurses to adolescent patients in place.
These regulatory announcements have caused panic for a lot of administrators who are already operating their facilities with profound staffing shortages. According to the Bureau of Health Workforce, by 2037, there will be a combined shortage of over 400,000 behavioral health professionals across the top mental health positions, even as demand grows.
In light of these potential new regulations, behavioral health facilities that are already struggling to maintain safe staffing numbers will have to limit the number of patients they can accept. In the midst of an already critical shortage of mental health care, these delays in care could prove disastrous.
With these proposed regulations, behavioral health facilities nationwide need to prepare for potential regulations in their own states, ensuring they’re ready to weather any storms that could disrupt safe staffing.
How compliance risks increase with increased behavioral health staffing ratios
On top of this push to maintain nurse-to-patient ratios, compliance regulations are also tightening. Audits are increasing, and the windows to ensure staff have the correct credentials have shortened significantly. NCQA-accredited organizations now have 120 days (down from 180), and NCQA-certified organizations have 90 days.
Adding new staff to this mix on top of the increased scrutiny can be a recipe for disaster. Ensuring all staff, including new, current, and contingent staff, have been onboarded appropriately, background checked, credentialed, and are maintaining correct ratios, is a lengthy, detailed process. With so many moving parts, it’s easy to miss one credential or be one worker short. While these problems have easy fixes, even a small lapse can open up facilities to significant fines.
In order to both maintain mandated ratios while also ensuring compliance remains top priority, it’s important to set up appropriate systems.
Reducing the manual toll of staffing regulations
Human error plays a significant role in lapsed credentials, understaffed floors, or incomplete verification. And when administrators are stressed and overworked, these errors increase. Automating these systems can reduce human error while saving thousands of dollars in potential fines for compliance violations.
Automated technology-based systems allow for easy storage of all licences, background checks, certifications, and verifications, eliminating the need to rifle through physical documents or sort through an already full email inbox to find one clinician’s documentation. Automated credentialing is your online filing system for all things compliance, sorting all documentation into one neat, easy-to-find system that’s always audit-ready.
Facilities that automate their credentialing don’t just see a reduction in administrative stress. They see an increase in trust between their facility, regulatory boards, and the communities they serve.
Key takeaways
For behavioral health facilities looking to implement a flexible system for keeping up with mandated staffing ratios, here are our key takeaways.
- Audit your systems – Take stock of where human error is clogging up the pipeline, what tasks are taking the longest, and how your scheduling system is working with all of these. Then, see which processes you can automate to streamline your staffing and compliance processes.
- See where gaps are causing the most impact – Do you see an influx in patients during the winter? Are there certain positions you see more need for? Take stock of your calendar and notice trends with patient demand as well as coverage. Once you’ve established trends, plug in contingent workers where there are more gaps to comply with mandated staffing ratios.
- Look ahead – While your state may not have introduced staffing mandates specifically for behavioral health facilities, they might as needs become more dire. Prepare a plan in case staffing mandates become more challenging or harder to fill to avoid having to quickly pivot to keep up with coverage demands.
Want more resources on how Medely can help upgrade your staffing for behavioral health facilities? Learn more here.
