Thursday, December 18, 2003

Insurer pressure cited as psychiatric stays shortenedBoston Globe story reprinted at the NAMI web site - "... Once considered treatment, hospitalization for psychiatric patients now is viewed more as an emergency stopover, a chance to stabilize suicidal or violent patients so they can be discharged to less-expensive outpatient treatment. The shorter hospital stays are due partly to more effective antidepressant and anti psychotic drugs that allow patients to work and live on their own, a positive development for 54 million Americans with mental illness. But pressure to shorten hospital stays also has come from managed care insurers, which have refused to pay for extensive hospital care. They have helped force down the average stay for psychiatric patients from 25.6 days in 1990 to 9.3 days in 2001, according to the most recent data from the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems...."  
  

States Try to Limit Drugs in Medicaid, but Makers Resist Tuscaloosa News story - "Kentucky's Medicaid program was $230 million in the red last year, and drastic cuts were on the table. A state panel proposed excluding Zyprexa, an antipsychotic medication that is the state's single biggest drug expense, from the Medicaid list of preferred medications. That was when the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and the Kentucky Consumer Advocate Network swung into action. The two groups, which are nonprofit, bused scores of protesters to a hearing in Frankfort, the state capital; placed full-page ads in Kentucky newspapers attacking the proposal; and sent angry faxes to state officials. What the advocacy groups did not say at the time was that the buses, ads and faxes were paid for by Eli Lilly & Company, Zyprexa's manufacturer..."