Tuesday, August 31, 2004

CMS Advises Medicaid Officials to Adopt Measures That Do Not Restrict Access to Psychiatric Medications
Announcement at the NAMI web site - "On August 20, 2004, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Technical Assistance Paper – 'Psychotropic Medications: Addressing Costs without Restricting Access.' CMS supports several state efforts to control the escalation in prescription drug costs while maintaining access to newer, effective medications. CMS has prepared and circulated this report to state Medicaid Directors and Regional CMS Medicaid Administrators addressing strategies to contain the costs of prescribing psychiatric medications without compromising quality or limiting access. We believe that this report can prove to be an effective tool in the ongoing advocacy fight to prevent restrictive formularies, fail first policies, and related cost containment efforts that compromise quality of care." See also the CMS report.  
  

Revisit mental health (Kansas)
Editorial in the Wichita Eagle - "Nearly 15 years after Kansas reformed its mental-health system to focus on treating patients in their communities rather than in state hospitals, how is the system holding up, and is the funding keeping up with the need? Those are important questions for state legislators to look at next year in light of increasing hospital admissions, recent closures of private inpatient units and changing Medicaid rates. Headlines earlier this month have created some serious concerns..."  
  

A mental health emergency (Indiana)
Editorial in the Indianapolis Star on "a crisis for the mentally ill, their families and the criminal justice system. The problems are rooted in decisions made in the 1970s, when the mental health establishment ditched its much-derided institutional model of treatment. The idea was to replace institutions with a grass-roots system in which the mentally ill would be treated in community clinics. State budget cuts, however, in Indiana and elsewhere have made it difficult for the community model to succeed. Too often families of mentally ill adults and children feel isolated, struggling to find support and appropriate treatment..."