Behavioral Health Case Manager Job Description Template

The qualification bar your funder applies, pasted verbatim.

No state licenses behavioral health case managers, and no national licence exists — Medicaid pays targeted case management under the state plan, so each state's program rule says who may hold the caseload.

The rules differ sharply: Minnesota requires a case manager to be a mental health practitioner or hold a bachelor's degree in the behavioral sciences or a related field, with routes around the degree that include four years of experience as a case manager associate or at least 80 hours of specific training completed before direct service delivery (Minn.

Stat. § 245.462, subd.

4).

Florida Medicaid has required, since July 1, 2017, every mental health targeted case management case manager and supervisor providing Medicaid-covered services to hold certification from an approved certification agency (per a Florida AHCA health care alert citing s.

394.4573, Florida Statutes).

Paste your state's rule into the requirements section and say whether you accept its experience routes — a generic degree ask screens out candidates your payer would have paid for.

If a certification is in play, case manager certifications compared separates payer-required credentials from voluntary ones, and the full hiring guide walks the verification steps.

A title that claims neither a licence nor treatment.

"Behavioral health case manager" is safe because no state issues the title.

Licensed clinical titles are not yours to borrow for an unlicensed hire: four states license titles in the psychiatric-technician family — California and Colorado license the "licensed psychiatric technician," Kansas the "licensed mental health technician" (LMHT) and Arkansas the "licensed psychiatric technician nurse" (Institute for Justice, License to Work, 3rd ed., 2022 data) — and Colorado's statute deems "psychiatric technician" and "psychiatric aide" synonymous with the licensed term, so none of those terms may be used to identify anyone not licensed under the article (C.R.S. § 12-295-105(3)).

In California the licence gates the work itself, not just the title: no person may perform the statutory psychiatric-technician services without one (Cal.

Bus. & Prof.

Code § 4540).

If the role carries a state staff designation such as QMHP, expand the letters and use your state's own definition — the definitions genuinely differ, and in Virginia it is a registration; What is a QMHP? compares the state versions.

Duties written from the federal definition, not from a clinical template.

Federal Medicaid regulation defines case management services as those "furnished to assist individuals, eligible under the State plan who reside in a community setting or are transitioning to a community setting, in gaining access to needed medical, social, educational, and other services" (42 CFR 440.169), with four components: comprehensive assessment and periodic reassessment; development and periodic revision of a care plan; referral and related activities; and monitoring and follow-up that includes at least one annual monitoring.

That is a job of arranging and monitoring services, not delivering them — and the funding rules say so directly: a targeted case management provider may not exercise the agency's authority to authorize or deny other services (42 CFR 441.18(a)(6)).

Write the duties list from the four components and your program's real coordination work; a posting that promises therapy or service approval will pull in the wrong applicants and set up disputes about what the funding pays for.

Pay stated as a proxy band, and the classification stated as a fact.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has no case-manager occupation.

The nearest series is SOC 21-1093, social and human service assistants — but "case manager" is not among that occupation's example titles, and an O*NET keyword search for "case manager" ranks it eleventh, so treat the numbers as a band around the role, never as "case manager pay": nationally, a $38,150–$54,350 middle half and a $45,930 median (BLS OEWS May 2025, cross-industry).

Where your case manager carries a clinical licence, budget from that licence's series instead — $67,880 for healthcare social workers (21-1022) and $97,550 for registered nurses (29-1141), same release.

Then state the classification: the FLSA's learned-professional exemption presumes advanced knowledge from a prolonged course of specialized instruction — licensed-professional territory — and a bachelor's-level case manager role generally fails that duties test, so treat the role as non-exempt, overtime-eligible, with hours tracked, whether you pay an hourly rate or a non-exempt salary.

The $684-a-week salary-basis floor the DOL restored in May 2026 applies only if you classify someone exempt, which this role generally does not support.

A licensed hire is the boundary of that rule: DOL's Wage and Hour Division wrote in January 2026 that an LCSW's duties likely meet the learned-professional test on a salary basis — while noting that moving the same work to hourly pay "would likely no longer meet the compensation criteria" (WHD Opinion Letter FLSA2026-1) — so where your case manager carries a clinical licence, the classification question is different, and worth confirming with counsel.

Requirements that name their own source.

The one training line that comes from law is hospital-specific: a hospital must train appropriate staff — and see them demonstrate competency — in the application of restraints, implementation of seclusion, monitoring, assessment, and providing care for a patient in restraint or seclusion, before performing those actions, as part of orientation, and subsequently on a periodic basis consistent with hospital policy; the training must include nonphysical intervention skills and first aid techniques and certification in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, with required periodic recertification, and the hospital documents completed training and competency in the personnel record (42 CFR 482.13(f), a Medicare Condition of Participation for hospitals).

Branded de-escalation programs such as CPI or Mandt are employer choices — no rule names them.

Ask in the posting only for what the duties, your facility or a payer rule actually triggers, and mark everything else "preferred."

See how working case managers describe the job on the behavioral health case manager job board.

Verify what no board will verify for you.

There is no licence lookup for this role, so the checklist shifts to documents: the degree or experience record that satisfies your state's written criteria, and any certification the role carries.

Apply the accreditation standard to all of them — a copy "in lieu of evidence that primary source verification was complete" does not meet the requirement, in The Joint Commission's wording for licences; extend the same discipline to transcripts and certificates, and record the date, who checked, what was checked and the result.

Keep a copy of the state rule itself in the file beside the document that satisfies it.

See hiring compliance: license verification and exclusion checks.

If Medicaid or Medicare pays for any of the work, run the exclusion check before day one.

The law bars you from employing anyone the HHS Office of Inspector General has excluded in federally funded work — the bar covers non-billing staff and volunteers too, and the civil monetary penalty runs up to $20,000 per item or service, inflation-adjusted to up to $25,595 for 2025 (42 CFR 1003.210).

No statute requires you to search OIG's LEIE list; OIG's own guidance says monthly screening best minimizes the liability, so calendar it.

Calendar what the funding rule will ask of the hire.

Florida's Medicaid agency requires copies of Florida Certification Board certification for all mental health targeted case management case managers and supervisors — the certificate lives in the file, not just the person.

Minnesota requires a case manager who does not yet have 2,000 hours of supervised experience to receive clinical supervision on individual service delivery from a mental health professional at least one hour per week, plus 40 hours of commissioner-approved training; a case manager who is not licensed, registered, or certified by a health-related licensing board must also complete 30 hours of continuing education every two years; and the federal definition expects at least one annual monitoring contact per client.

Where a voluntary certification rides on the role, diary its renewal — the Board-Certified Case Manager (CCM) from The Commission runs on a five-year cycle renewed by 80 hours of continuing education or re-examination, and it was never entry-level: it needs a current, unrestricted licence in a health or human services discipline, an exam-based certification in one, or a bachelor's or graduate degree in a health or human services field — plus case management employment experience of 12 months full-time under a CCM supervisor or as a supervisor of case managers, or 24 months full-time otherwise — so a strong entry-level hire cannot hold one yet.

If the pool is thin, hire the rung below and grow the role.

Some states write the ladder into law: Minnesota's case manager associate — at least 21 years old, a high school diploma or equivalent, plus one of six criteria such as 6,000 hours of work experience as a nondegreed state hospital technician — works under a case manager's direction with 40 hours of preservice training and at least four hours of supervision a month, and may qualify as a case manager after four years of supervised associate work (three years on the supervised-experience route), without a degree.

The technician-to-case-manager career ladder maps the rungs.

This page is career and hiring information, not legal or clinical advice, and it is not for someone seeking treatment. Qualification rules, payer requirements and certification criteria are set by the state Medicaid agencies, program authorities and certifying bodies named above, and all of them change — confirm the current rule with the body that makes it, and consult an employment attorney on classification.