“In case you can’t fly, run. In case you can’t run, stroll. In case you can’t stroll, crawl, however by all means, maintain transferring.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Behavioral well being is among the 4 key strategic pillars for the MHA this program yr. The MHA Board of Trustees tasked our affiliation with prioritizing the difficulty and to establish options that may make a significant distinction for sufferers and suppliers. This subject is especially necessary to present MHA Board Chair Shannon Striebich, president and CEO of Trinity Well being Michigan, who particularly centered on this matter throughout her opening remarks as chair throughout the 2023 MHA Annual Assembly final June. At Chair Striebich’s path, the MHA staff is difficult at work on a wide range of initiatives that I’m glad to share.
The MHA Behavioral Well being Integration Council, chaired by Linda Peterson, MD, from McLaren Better Lansing, and staffed by Lauren LaPine, senior director, legislative and public coverage, MHA, guides our coverage efforts for behavioral and bodily well being integration. The council develops suggestions addressing entry to behavioral healthcare providers and fostering integration with the larger healthcare supply system. Their agendas are strong and the member engagement is incredible.
The MHA collects knowledge by means of a weekly survey of our member hospitals to raised perceive and doc our behavioral well being challenges in actual time. This knowledge reveals greater than 150 sufferers, together with youngsters, are sitting in a Michigan hospital emergency division (ED) day by day ready for the suitable healthcare providers. Many are ready for an out there behavioral well being mattress, whereas one-third are ready only for an analysis to find out remedy wants. And lots of of those sufferers are essentially the most weak in our group, supported by Medicaid or Medicare. Sadly, we all know 33% of the Medicaid sufferers will spend greater than 48 hours ready within the ED. These sufferers will not be within the acceptable setting to obtain the providers and care they want, whereas hospitals are spending vital assets to take care of these sufferers till they discover placement. This consists of something from attending to fundamental wants, together with meals and clothes, to their medical wants, whether or not that’s by means of psychiatric providers, pharmaceuticals and extra security and facility wants.
With the council’s encouragement, the MHA final yr was profitable in securing new funding from the state within the quantity of $50 million to help a aggressive grant program for Michigan healthcare entities to broaden entry to pediatric inpatient behavioral well being providers. The MHA was the fiduciary of this program and disseminated the funding to our members in a well timed style.
The MHA is an advocacy group, and along with funding like this, the idea of figuring out public coverage that may assist to deal with particular healthcare challenges is one in all our core competencies. In that vein, we labored very laborious with our members, and subsequently with our legislative champions, to draft and introduce necessary behavioral well being laws. We’re very happy that simply final month, a number of payments have been formally launched that can tackle a number of the challenges hospitals expertise when behavioral well being sufferers search care within the ED. The 4 payments would require sharing the provision of group based mostly psychological well being and substance use dysfunction providers (Senate Invoice 802), increasing pre-admission screening obligations within the ED to extra clinically certified employees (Senate Invoice 806), increasing hospital swing mattress eligibility to incorporate inpatient behavioral well being sufferers (Senate Invoice 811) and eradicating arbitrary business insurance coverage limitations on the period of inpatient behavioral well being admissions (Senate Invoice 833).
These payments will be a magnet for our advocacy and coverage groups for the rest of this legislative session. We developed an infographic that’s now out there and will probably be shared with lawmakers to assist them perceive the importance of the behavioral well being disaster, but in addition the options that may assist sufferers obtain the care they want in a well timed method, whereas assuaging the stress positioned on healthcare employees and hospitals.
The Michigan Division of Well being and Human Companies (MDHHS) is a key companion on this work and the MHA is engaged with the MDHHS on a number of initiatives. First is collaborating with the MDHHS to create a statewide psychiatric mattress registry, as outlined in state legislation signed in 2018. Such a registry has the potential to raised inform healthcare suppliers of mattress availability to scale back the period of time sufferers are ready to obtain out there placement. The MHA can be taking part in a committee to enhance behavioral well being affected person transport. Lastly, our organizations are working carefully to broaden entry to Psychiatric Residential Therapy Amenities (PRTFs), with the goal to ascertain 150 PRTF beds throughout the state.
The MHA additionally represents the pursuits of hospitals and well being programs in a number of workgroups. These embody the Michigan Judicial Council Behavioral Well being Enhancements Workgroup to develop new methods to divert adults and youth with psychological well being and substance use issues away from the justice system and to attach them with wanted behavioral well being providers. The MHA additionally participates within the Assisted Outpatient Therapy (AOT) Workgroup, which developed an AOT toolkit for courts, group psychological well being businesses, jails and hospitals and well being programs to make use of to broaden statewide entry to AOT. These workgroups show the breadth of the MHA’s work and the variety of stakeholders concerned throughout the state on this subject.
We all know our behavioral well being challenges won’t be solved in a single day, and it might be simple to throw up our palms and shift our consideration and power to “simpler” points. Many behavioral well being sufferers have complicated wants that require many companions working collectively to fill within the gaps inside the system and to enhance entry to care. The excellent news is there has by no means been a brighter gentle shined on this subject, and the stigma related to behavioral well being challenges is starting to fade. The MHA is proud to work with our member hospitals and all our companions on this essential work, and I’m assured that we’re making an actual distinction. As Dr. King inspired, we have to maintain transferring.
As all the time, I welcome your ideas.