Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Oversight granted (California) Article in the July APA Monitor - "Some of California's neediest mental health patients stand to benefit from a recent regulatory development in that state. Psychologists in California now can manage the care of patients with serious mental illnesses in acute-care hospitals, thanks to new state regulations that recognize psychologists' expertise in diagnosing and treating mental disorders. The new regulations, issued by the state's Department of Health Services (DHS) in April, allow psychologists to direct patient care as medical staff members at acute-care hospitals in the state. For example, they can now independently make such decisions as when to admit, transfer and discharge patients. Previously, the regulations allowed only psychiatrists to do this work and to serve as attending clinicians, despite a 1978 state law that granted psychologists full clinical privileges."  
  

Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Highlights CQ HealthBeat Coverage of Latest Medicaid News Item in the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report on recent developments related to Medicaid, based on reporting in CQ HealthBeat. One item of particular note is that "The federal commission tasked with recommending ways to cut $10 billion over five years from Medicaid has 60 days until its report is due; however, neither the commission's members nor a meeting schedule have been announced..."  
  

Cost-Effectiveness Data Prove MH Care Won't Break Bank  Psychiatric News story - "New analytical methodologies demonstrate that treatment for psychiatric disorders can be cost-effective. Members of APA's Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing took a new look at a long-standing problem at APA's 2005 annual meeting in Atlanta in the session 'Funding for Psychiatry: From the Irrational to the Rational.' That intractable problem is what former APA President Paul Appelbaum, M.D., called the 'systematic defunding of the mental health system.' Edward Maxwell, M.D., opened the session with an overview of the funding trends and issues that have resulted in a serious discrepancy between the costs to provide needed mental health and substance abuse (MH/SA) services and resources devoted to them. Maxwell is an APA/Bristol-Myers Squibb Fellow at Brown University..." See also Where Does the Money Come From? And Where Does It Go? at the same source.