Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Medscape Journal Scan - Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, May 2004
"Journal Scan is the clinician's guide to the latest clinical research findings in the American Journal of Psychiatry, The Lancet, Archives of General Psychiatry, The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, and Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. Short summaries of feature articles include links to the article abstracts and full text when available." "med"  
  

Final Report: Wisconsin Child and Family Services Review
A US Department of Health and Human Services report (in Adobe Acrobat format), available through the Open Minds web site - "This document presents the findings of the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) for the State of Wisconsin. The CFSR assesses State child welfare agency performance with regard to seven child welfare outcomes in the areas of safety, permanency, and wellbeing and seven systemic factors pertaining to child welfare agency operations..."  
  

NAMI Campaign Releases Phase 1 Report
A report, in Adobe Acrobat format, on the Campaign for the Mind of America - "The goal of the Campaign for the Mind of America state pilot initiative has been to create and implement a political initiative to raise the awareness of mental illness, affect policies that support access to early intervention, treatment and services, and enhance the hope of recovery."  
  

Editorials Respond to Supreme Court Decision on Suing HMOs
Item in the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report reviewing press reactions to the Supreme Court decision last week - "Several newspaper editorials recently examined the unanimous Supreme Court decision last week that patients cannot file suit against HMOs in state court when they experience injuries as a result of administrative decisions related to treatment. In the case, which involved a 1997 Texas law, two state residents separately filed suit in state court against their HMOs, Aetna and Cigna, over allegations that the companies made decisions related to treatment that resulted in injuries. However, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 preempts state laws that allow patients to file such lawsuits..."  
  

Mentally ill facing service cutbacks (Washington)
Bellingham Herald story - "Local officials are scrambling to find new ways of providing and paying for services to the mentally ill, in the face of new federal policies that will cut back their longstanding use of Medicaid money. Gary Williams, Whatcom County's mental-health program specialist, said as many as 300 mental-health patients in the county could face reduced services. Today, directors of the five-county North Sound Mental Health Administration will meet in Mount Vernon to consider plans for coping with the new policies. Charles Benjamin, administration executive director, said the federal policy shift threatens to cut $10.4 million that the administration has been using to provide mental-health services in Whatcom, Skagit, Island, San Juan and Snohomish counties."  
  

Mental-health system evolving (North Carolina)
Herald-Sun story - "A group of local mental-health and social-service providers worked Monday to make the best of the ongoing, sometimes confusing changes in North Carolina's mental-health system. A desire to beef up the mental-health programs offered in the local schools was a common theme voiced by the providers who crowded around six tables for four hours of brainstorming. They hoped strengthening school-based programs would get an early start on helping children with a whole host of issues, from low self-esteem to more advanced problems."  
  

Milwaukee County working to provide mental health system relief (Wisconsin)
AP story at the Duluth News Tribune - "Milwaukee County is working on a number of steps to provide some temporary relief to the county's overloaded mental health care system, County Executive Scott Walker says. Walker said Monday that Rogers Memorial Hospital in Oconomowoc may take some insured mental-health patients, and county mobile response teams will perform triage at private-hospital emergency rooms to determine whether patients need to be involuntarily detained or should get other help..."  
  

Gov. Holden signs bill to aid mental health (Missouri)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch story - "As many as one-third of Missouri residents may find it easier to get insurance coverage for mental health because of a bill signed Monday by Gov. Bob Holden. The bill requires that all health insurance companies in the state provide coverage for mental health, as of Jan. 1. The coverage must be as easy to get as coverage for physical health, and cannot cost more."