Tuesday, May 04, 2004

MHMR develops model program (Texas)
Kerrville Daily Times story - "A financial crisis at the Hill Country Community Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center has brought sweeping changes to the entire Texas mental health system. ... Hill Country MHMR has developed ... a new model of how to do business and treat patients — what they call a disease management approach to the delivery of mental health services. On the business side, the center focused on efficiency, mandating five and a half hours every day for patients and allowing workers to spend the remaining two and a half hours on paperwork and meetings. On the clinical side, they developed a therapy-based program for clients that assessed how much help MHMR clients needed to help them function. That therapy includes medicine, behavioral therapy and helping a patient take control of his own wellness. ... All of this change attracted the attention of State Rep. John Davis, R-Houston, who filed a bill last spring that mandated the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation to implement the Hill Country’s disease management program in all of its centers."  
  

Families may be billed when kin are sent to mental hospital
Omaha World-Herald story - "Unlike prison, the cost of confinement in a state mental hospital isn't totally covered by the state in Texas. The state pays for the poor, but it requires other patients or their families to pay what they can, based on insurance, income, benefits and property. Wisconsin and North Carolina also charge criminally confined patients. ... Courts in various states are split on the issue, said Michael Perlin, a professor at New York Law School who has written about the matter. Some reason that patients should pay because the overriding purpose of their hospital stay is treatment. Others believe patients shouldn't have to pay because the state has ordered them to the hospital, largely to protect the public..."  
  

Malice in mental health (District of Columbia)
Washington Post editorial on the aftermath of two tragic incidents - "The desire to put a good face on a bad situation is not peculiar to the D.C. Department of Mental Health. But it is especially distressing when the reassuring words of the city's mental health leadership are quickly contradicted by unpleasant facts or by others in a position to know..."