Section 590.192 requires every peace officer and first responder to complete a mental health check-in once every three to five years. Portico is the platform on which those appointments are scheduled with licensed clinicians, compliance intervals are tracked for each individual, and completion is documented. Clinical disclosures remain privileged and are not transmitted to the agency.
Yes. Missouri RSMo 590.192 requires every peace officer and first responder to complete a mental health check-in with a program service provider once every three to five years. The current version took effect August 28, 2026.
The requirement is not limited to sworn law enforcement. Under RSMo 190.1010, first responder includes 911 dispatchers, paramedics, emergency medical technicians, and volunteer or full-time paid firefighters. The statute does not specify what credentials a program service provider must hold, and it says nothing about how an agency should track completion.
Primary sources: Missouri Revisor of Statutes, RSMo 590.192 and RSMo 190.1010. Statutory history: enacted 2021, amended 2024, amended 2026 (HB 2372). Reviewed against the Revisor text September 2, 2026.
Missouri's Critical Incident Stress Management Program is administered by the Department of Public Safety. Most of § 590.192 describes the program itself. Subsection 2 establishes an individual obligation that extends to every covered employer in the state.
Note the inclusion of volunteer firefighters in the § 190.1010 definition. A fire protection district carrying forty volunteers has forty covered personnel, not zero.
The amendment effective August 28, 2026 established an alternative compliance path. A department that maintains its own behavioral health or mental health program meeting the requirements of subsection 1 satisfies the check-in obligation without referral to an outside provider.
Agencies with an embedded clinician often run the strongest programs in the state, and frequently exceed what the statute asks: annual contact rather than one encounter every fifth year, a standardized screening battery completed before the appointment, and civilian staff included alongside sworn personnel. Portico is not a replacement for that clinician. It is the scheduling and documentation layer beneath the program.
The administrative work is where the burden actually falls, and it falls the same way whether the clinician is embedded or external. A master list of covered personnel. Completion dates recorded by hand. A year-end reconciliation to find who is outstanding, followed by a round of reminders.
The requirement is individual rather than cohort-based. There is no common review date. Each person's interval begins at the date of their last completed check-in, and the covered roster changes continuously through hiring, separation, promotion, and volunteer intake. An interval of three to five years exceeds the typical tenure of the administrator assigned to track it.
Check-in completed. Provider notifies the supervisor. The interval begins for that individual only.
No action due. Roster composition changes. New personnel begin intervals at independent start dates.
Interval opens. Compliant from this point forward, with the outer limit approaching.
Interval closes. Beyond this date the obligation is unmet on an individual basis.
Portico is the platform on which a licensed practice and the agency it serves operate in a single system. Applied to the Missouri requirement, it provides four functions.
Each covered individual books their own appointment against a licensed clinician's published availability, without administrative intermediation by agency personnel.
Each covered person carries their own compliance date. The agency view distinguishes personnel within interval, approaching the outer limit, and past it, replacing the master list and the year-end reconciliation.
The statutory notification is what an agency will be asked to evidence. Portico retains the record of completion and its date in a form suitable for presentation to a city administrator, a governing board, or an auditor.
Pre-employment evaluation, promotional evaluation, and each recurring check-in are retained in one record rather than distributed across separate systems.
Participation depends on this boundary holding, and on personnel understanding it before the first appointment rather than discovering it afterward. The statute renders an officer's disclosures privileged and inadmissible against them, and Portico's role-based access model is constructed to the same standard. The agency receives compliance status. The treating clinician retains the clinical record.
The content of the clinical encounter, including screening scores. Privileged under § 590.192.3, retained by the licensed clinician, and not surfaced to the agency through Portico under any role.
Section 590.192 requires a meeting with a program service provider. It does not define the qualifications of that provider. No credential standard appears anywhere in the section.
The variance that matters most is not licensure level. It is whether the clinician knows this work. Clinicians embedded in public safety agencies consistently report that providers unfamiliar with the population miss the specific ways officers and first responders present distress, which is why some agencies decline to count outside therapy toward the requirement at all and run a single standardized program instead.
Safeguard and wellness evaluations delivered on Portico are performed by licensed clinicians working to a standardized protocol and a common screening set, so findings are comparable across an agency and across years rather than varying with whoever happened to conduct the encounter. Pre-employment and leadership competence evaluations are performed and signed by licensed psychologists.
Madison SRC builds and operates the platform. It does not practice psychology, and neither does the software.
Dr. Saz Madison was raised in St. Louis and established his clinical practice in Kansas City. The agencies served across that span are the population this work was developed around.
The current book of agencies on the platform is concentrated in the Kansas City metro, built department by department. Safeguard and wellness evaluations were an established part of the clinical offering before the current version of § 590.192 took effect.
Madison SRC also maintains representatives in Missouri who can serve as an agency's primary point of contact for the proposal, for onboarding, and for administrative questions that arise afterward.
The statute extends well beyond police departments. If your organization employs any of the following, the obligation applies to them.
Every commissioned peace officer, whatever the size of the department.
Deputies and commissioned staff across the county.
Paid and volunteer firefighters alike. Volunteers are named in the definition.
Paramedics and emergency medical technicians.
Dispatchers are covered by name under § 190.1010.
The office that budgets for the requirement and answers for it.
Civilian employees outside these categories are not reached by the statute. Agencies that treat the check-in as a wellness program rather than a compliance minimum commonly extend it to all staff by policy, which is a roster decision before it is a clinical one.
The statute says once every three to five years and does not resolve it. Some Missouri agencies have written policy at three years; personnel commonly read the requirement as five. Either is defensible on the text. The interval your policy adopts determines your roster math, and the tracking obligation is identical either way.
The statute does not address it. Some agencies decline to count outside care toward the requirement, on three grounds: a common screening set makes findings comparable across the agency, providers unfamiliar with public safety may miss how officers present distress, and a single known clinician reduces stigma around the appointment. If your policy does count outside care, the completion record still has to come from somewhere.
No. A fitness-for-duty evaluation is a referral-driven assessment of whether an individual can safely perform essential job functions, typically initiated in response to an identified concern, and its findings are reported to the employer. The § 590.192 check-in is routine, periodic, and confidential, and its clinical content is not disclosed to the agency.
The statutory obligation attaches to the individual, and the provider's notification is what evidences completion. Portico identifies who remains within interval and who does not, which surfaces the issue as an administrative matter well before it becomes a personnel one.
Potentially, under the 2026 amendment, if it constitutes an established behavioral health or mental health program meeting the requirements of subsection 1. Two separate questions decide whether it serves the purpose. The first is documentary: can it produce a per-individual completion record across a three-to-five-year interval, since that is what an agency will be asked to provide.
The second is clinical, and it is the one agencies raise most. EAP panels are contracted through the city and staffed largely by generalists. Police and fire leadership consistently report that providers with little familiarity with the population and the culture miss how officers and firefighters present distress, and that a poor first encounter costs far more than the appointment saved, because the member does not come back. Satisfying the statute and serving the person are separate tests, and an EAP can pass the first while failing the second.
Yes. Section 190.1010 defines first responder to include a volunteer or full-time paid firefighter. In many fire protection districts this is the largest covered population and the one most frequently omitted from compliance planning.
Provide your covered headcount and current approach. We will return a proposal covering scheduling, clinical delivery, and completion documentation, scaled to your agency. A Missouri-based representative can serve as your point of contact from that point forward.
Madison SRC, LLC is a management services organization. Madison SRC does not provide psychological, medical, or other clinical services and does not practice psychology. All psychological evaluations and clinical services are performed by licensed clinicians, including licensed psychologists, employed by or contracted with independent professional entities under management services agreements. This page describes Missouri statutory requirements in general terms and is not legal advice.