OBJECTIVE: The belief that public mental health services should be regionalized has guided their delivery for the past four decades. But there have been few opportunities to observe and evaluate a service entity's shift from a centralized to a regionalized delivery system. This brief report focuses on the regionalization of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health's forensic transition team, a service that manages community reentry from correctional settings for persons with severe mental illness.

METHODS: Pre-and postregionalization episodes (N=957) were compared to examine the consequences of regionalizing the forensic transition team.

RESULTS: Overall, engagement in services, a key forensic transition team outcome measure, improved postregionalization. Unexpectedly, the rate of loss to follow-up significantly increased among former county house of correction inmates.

CONCLUSIONS: Overall, regionalizing reentry services increased the forensic transition team's capability and expertise in managing reentry for persons with mental illness. However, follow-up of individuals exiting county houses of correction remains a challenge.