Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Covering New Americans - A Review of Federal and State Policies Related to Immigrant Eligibility and Access to Publicly Funded Health Insurance
From the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, in Adobe Acrobat format, "This brief provides an overview of health coverage challenges facing immigrants, the federal rules regarding immigrants’ eligibility for Medicaid and SCHIP, and state efforts to provide replacement coverage for immigrants who are ineligible for Medicaid and SCHIP."  
  

Brain Researchers to Develop New Class of Drugs to Repair Psychiatric Disorders
University of British Columbia press release - " 'Smart' drugs capable of targeting specific brain cells to control psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia may be ready for early clinical trials within three years, with the launch of a $1.5 million project to take place at the Brain Research Centre (BRC), a partnership of the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI). The new drugs would be the first significant change in decades to medications used to treat psychiatric disorders, says neuroscientist and team leader Yu Tian Wang, a UBC professor of Medicine and BRC member."  
  

Medicaid Coverage for Poor Adults - A Potential Building Block for Bipartisan Health Reform
Paper by Stan Dorn of the Economic and Social Research Institute - "This paper explores whether giving state Medicaid programs increased flexibility to cover uninsured, poor adults could be one element of a broader, bipartisan expansion in health coverage. Among households with incomes below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), million working-age adults now lack coverage, comprising 27 percent of the uninsured."  
  

Treatment of Anxiety Increases, But Some Groups Left Out
Psychiatric News story - "Although more Americans are being treated for anxiety than in the past, there is still room for improvement—especially in the case of African Americans, Hispanics, and people with less education. Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent psychiatric conditions in the United States, yet people with anxiety disorders have tended to be under-diagnosed and undertreated. Now there is some good news: The outpatient treatment of people with such conditions nearly doubled between 1987 and 1999—from 0.43 per 100 Americans to 0.83 per 100 Americans, a highly significant difference. This finding has emerged from a study headed by Mark Olfson, M.D., a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and reported in the September Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. "  
  

MCOs Still Not Getting Mental Health Care Right
Psychiatric News story - "Managed care plans are doing a better job of providing quality treatment for many conditions—but not for mental illness. Managed care plans that publicly report performance data showed significant gains in quality of care last year on several critical measures, but no gains were recorded on key measures in the treatment of mental illness, according to a report by the National Committee on Quality Assurance (NCQA). The NCQA's annual report, 'State of Health Care Quality,' found that performance improvements recorded last year among the 563 managed care plans that reported their results were among the largest ever. These plans cover about 69 million people and represent a subsection of the broader health care system, according to the NCQA." See also the full report, in Adobe Acrobat format.  
  

Depressed Workers on the Job Hurt the Bottom Line
Psychiatric News story - "Major depression diminishes work performance in terms of both productivity and task focus, resulting in workers missing the equivalent of 2.3 days a month. Lost productivity due only to employee absenteeism may underestimate the true effect of depression on people's work lives. A study in the October American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that diminished productivity while workers are on the job—what has been called "presenteeism"—may significantly add to the costs attributable to untreated or inadequately treated depression. Moreover, compared with other conditions that significantly impact on-the-job productivity, depression appears to be among the most debilitating, according to the study."  
  

Mental health outruns coverage (Ohio)
Cincinnati Enquirer story on Rep. Lynn Olman's "10-year campaign to pass a bill requiring private insurance companies to offer equal coverage for mental and physical illness. The business community has argued Olman's bill is a costly mandate that could force some small businesses to drop health coverage altogether. Olman maintains that offering less insurance coverage for mental health is discriminatory."  
  

Woman honored for fighting stigma of mental illness (Michigan)
Kalamazoo Gazette story - "Lenore Huston of Kalamazoo was recently selected as the statewide winner of a Michigan Association of Community Health Boards award. Huston received the 'Partners In Excellence' award to recognize people who, in using community mental health services, 'enhanced the perception of those services and their recipients,' association president Mary Balberde said in announcing the award. One consumer of mental-health services in the state was named. Huston, a college graduate, mother and grandmother, does public speaking and has written a book about her decades-long journey with mental illness."  
  

Mental health agency may soon choose interim head (Michigan)
Detroit Free Press story - "More than a year after the Detroit-Wayne County Community Mental Health's executive director was removed, no one has been named to lead the agency. The agency's board is set to choose someone for the position next week -- but only on a transitional basis. And while the process to find a permanent executive director could start soon, some board members say they're reluctant to hire someone until the state Legislature votes on whether to eliminate the county's control of the mental health agency..."