Comparing Approaches to Identify Mobile Crisis Services in Medicaid Administrative Claims

A claims-based approach combining mobile unit (POS 15), home (POS 12), and homeless shelter (POS 04) codes with crisis intervention procedure codes provides a practical framework for identifying billed mobile crisis encounters in Medicaid data. This moderate approach showed the strongest directional alignment with state-reported coverage and may support cross-state monitoring of crisis service delivery. Further work is needed to validate these methods using provider-level or encounter-level data.