Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorder Bed Capacity, Need, and Shortage Estimates in Santa Clara County, California

Psychiatric and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment beds provide essential support for treating individuals with behavioral health disorders. Although there is a general lack of supply to meet demand for psychiatric and SUD treatment beds, the extent of these gaps at local and state levels is opaque, thus warranting the need for additional analyses at local levels. Therefore, the County of Santa Clara, which has declared a public health crisis for residents with mental illness and SUDs, was interested in understanding gaps between psychiatric and SUD treatment bed capacity and needs at different types of facilities and levels of care.

In this report, the authors estimate psychiatric bed and residential SUD treatment capacity, need, and shortages for adults and children and adolescents at various levels of care. Drawing from various datasets, literature review findings, and facility survey responses, the authors then estimate the number of beds required — at each level of care — to meet demand for adult and for child and adolescent treatment beds, while identifying hard-to-place populations. The authors use these estimates to inform their recommendations to help the County of Santa Clara ensure that all its residents, especially those who are enrolled in Medi-Cal or are uninsured, have access to the behavioral health care that they need.