This bill reenacts and amends RCW 71.24.890 to set statewide rules for designating and operating 988 contact hubs and to clarify roles for an unnamed "department" and an unnamed "authority." It requires the department to adopt rules by January 1, 2025, and to designate 988 contact hubs by January 1, 2026, with a statutory limit of no more than four hubs without legislative approval. Contracts with designated hubs must require 24/7 crisis connection, SAMHSA-compliant triage and referral, real-time data-sharing with regional crisis lines and BHASOs to support Medicaid reimbursement, workforce and training standards (including peer support and cultural competency for agricultural communities), coordination on regional protocols and dispatching of mobile and community teams, and the ability for the department to revoke designations for substantial noncompliance. The statute refers to funding set at a level intended to achieve an in-state call response rate of at least 90 percent by July 22, 2022, but the text does not explain how that past deadline applies to current compliance. The bill creates a requirement that the department develop and implement a technologically advanced statewide behavioral health and suicide prevention crisis call center platform able to receive phone calls, texts, chats, and similar communications, to be fully funded and implemented by June 30, 2027. It directs the authority, subject to appropriations, to coordinate information sharing across hubs, regional lines, BHASOs, and managed care organizations; to establish agreements with managed care organizations and BHASOs (by January 1, 2023) requiring next‑day appointments for urgent callers; and to develop best-practice guidelines (by July 1, 2023), procedures for dispatch coordination, and guidance for serving high‑risk and culturally or linguistically specific populations. The department must monitor 988 caller data and begin annual reporting to the governor and appropriate legislative committees starting December 1, 2027. The bill also provides that routing decisions must not conflict with Washington’s agreement with the national suicide prevention lifeline or 988 administrator. The bill amends RCW 82.86.050 to create a statewide 988 behavioral health crisis response and suicide prevention line account in the state treasury funded by receipts from a statewide 988 tax; funds may be spent only after appropriation and only for specified crisis services. Ten percent of annual tax receipts must be dedicated to establishment grants, performance payments, supplemental payments, and endorsement activities for mobile rapid response and community‑based crisis teams endorsed under RCW 71.24.903, with up to 30 percent of that allocation reserved for teams affiliated with a Washington tribe. During the 2025–2027 biennium the legislature may appropriate account moneys to maintain and expand crisis response services, and the bill prohibits using account moneys to supplant general fund appropriations or Medicaid-covered services. Important context is incomplete or unclear in the provided text: subsection (5) addressing technology/platform coordination is cut off, identities of "the department" and "the authority" are not specified, portions of allowable expenditures and other lists are truncated, and the precise amended language of RCW 82.86.050 is not fully shown.

If enacted, the state will centralize and fund a smaller number of designated 988 contact hubs (no more than four without the Legislature’s ok) and require them to operate 24/7, share real-time data with regional crisis lines, meet operational and clinical standards, and connect callers to crisis intervention and follow-up care. The department must adopt designation rules and pick hubs by early 2026, develop and fully fund a new multi-channel crisis platform by June 30, 2027, and money for these activities will come from a new statewide 988 account funded by a 988 tax. Behavioral health administrative services organizations, managed care plans, mobile crisis teams, community crisis centers, and tribal-affiliated teams will see new funding streams, requirements to coordinate (including next-day appointments for urgent callers), and reporting duties; ten percent of annual tax receipts are reserved for mobile and community-based crisis teams with up to 30 percent of that set aside for tribal-affiliated teams, while funds cannot replace existing general fund or Medicaid-covered services. Key implementation details remain unclear and will affect real costs and timelines: the bill text here does not name the specific state department or authority in charge, leaves important technology and expenditure language incomplete, references a past 90 percent in-state response target without explaining current compliance consequences, and makes several actions “subject to appropriations,” so final funding levels, exact service scope, and some operational rules will depend on later rulemaking and legislative budget decisions.