Best Practices in State Medicaid and Mental Health Program Collaboration

Collaboration between state Medicaid and Mental Health programs has varied greatly across states and administrations. The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the basic elements of successful collaboration through 1) a review of the literature on collaboration, and 2) a description of collaboration in two states. The state examples highlight the mechanisms through which successful collaboration occurs and describe the types of activities in which collaborating agencies engage.