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Recommended Initiative 13:

Mental Health Initiatives

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Better recognize the importance of mental health in the health care delivery system by:

  • Consolidating mental health services oversight within the Agency for Healthcare Administration (AHCA) that oversees mental health and substance abuse.
  • Providing Medicaid reimbursement for free standing, full service hospitals/residential treatment facilities for specialized treatment of mental health illnesses provided the free standing hospital has a 24-hour emergency room and is a Baker Act receiving facility.
  • Enacting mental health parity legislation at the state level for treatment of organic mental health illnesses.

Benefit of Recommended Initiative 13

Rationalizing the oversight, reporting and tracking of all mental health care would dramatically improve population-based planning for all health care and especially mental health care needed in the state. With different reporting requirements, the types and quality of mental health services being used are not consistently tracked, making it difficult to budget accurately. Varying reporting and treatment standards also potentially leave the mentally ill vulnerable to providers offering less than standard care,

Allowing facilities that specialize in mental illness to access Medicaid reimbursement allows these facilities to be reimbursed for care that otherwise is charity care. It also has the effect of requiring them to accept all comers, including the indigent, given current Medicaid regulations, making all mental health providers share in the community burden of caring for those with no coverage.

Offering parity care coverage for mental illness will benefit the mentally ill who may not be getting the kinds and amount of care they need. Rational use of mental health resources would also benefit hospital emergency rooms (ER) and law enforcement agencies that are first responders in the current system, even though they may not be suited for the job. ER/acute care is the most expensive in the health care system, but is not necessarily the most appropriate. Wider access to less acute care would help the mentally ill get help before their mental illness becomes an emergency

Public and private payers ultimately will benefit from the rational use of appropriate resources and from treatment of mental illnesses that are generally linked to higher acuity levels in other types of physical ailments.