Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Addressing the Root Causes of the So-Called Access Problem Drug Benefit Trends article at Medscape - "A national telephone survey of 7197 primary care physicians (PCPs) found that access to high-quality specialty services for their patients was available 81% of the time for specialty medical services, compared with 28% of the time for outpatient specialty mental health services. With some 35,000 psychiatrist members of the American Psychiatric Association, 150,000 members of the American Psychological Association, 153,000 members of the National Association of Social Workers, and a rapidly increasing number of nurse practitioners and psychiatric clinical nurse specialists, why is there a problem? (These quoted numbers are only an approximation of clinical resource availability. Professional membership does not equate with actual availability, because not all professionals work full-time to deliver care in mental health settings or choose to belong to their professional associations.)That we have a sluggish and unresponsive specialty behavioral health system does not make sense, especially with primary care providers doing most of the prescribing for the majority of patients with anxiety and/or depression..." [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].