Tag: Mental health practice

How’s Your Compliance Program Coming Along?

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Last week I attended a webinar sponsored by The National Council: Healthcare Reform Expands Compliance Requirements: Prepare Now.  There is a recording of the presentation at the link above.

I attend lots of webinars to try to stay informed about what is happening in our industry. As indicated by the fact that I often write about those webinars, I am often stimulated by them. I am rarely alarmed, but this presentation by attorney Adam Falk was almost frightening. I found myself thinking that, if I were still in private practice of psychology, I would stop accepting Medicare patients. Since I just turned 60 and will become one of those Medicare patients in only five years, that thought was most distressing.

According to Mr. Falk, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, as part of the attempt to save money by eliminating fraud, has placed new requirements on providers of service large and small, to demonstrate compliance with the law. It is not enough to comply; one must also be able to prove that compliance, hence the need for a formal Compliance Program.

The regulations have not yet been written to determine what must be included in such a Compliance Program, but Mr. Falk strongly suggests the need to be proactive rather than reactive regarding this matter. While compliance programs are to be ‘scalable’ based on the size of the organization and the amount of service provided as part of the Medicare or Medicaid systems, there are certain aspects that are essential.

The biggest danger to provider organizations is that the Affordable Care Act classifies much irregular activity as making a false claim. The penalties for false claims are significant. Fraud is rampant and HHS is tasked with eliminating as much of it as possible to protect the taxpayer’s dollar. The attempts to prevent this fraudulent activity provide the Secretary of HHS with broad authority.

Additionally, providers are required to identify, report and return overpayment by Medicare or Medicaid within 60 days of the provider’s recognition that an overpayment has been received. That recognition applies to the clerk in your accounts receivable department who mentioned the overpayment to a supervisor or to someone in authority. Training staff and providing formal procedures to follow will be an essential part of any compliance program.

I would suggest that you take an hour and listen to Mr. Falk’s webinar. Then start to research what might be required at your organization’s level to comply with the requirements of the law.

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I received an email notification today from the Office of Civil Rights indicating that HHS has scheduled a second public discussion on Confidentiality and Privacy Issues Related to Psychological Testing Data. The meeting will be held in Los Angeles on November 18, 2010.

Please share your comments below. Thanks for reading!

Primary and Behavioral Healthcare Integration

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On Monday the National Council announced that they have won a competitive grant to provide training and technical assistance to move forward the process of integrating primary and behavioral health care services. They will provide support services and assistance to organizations that have received grants to develop integrated care within their organizations, as well as to other organizations seeking to move in this direction.

 One of the pushes in the ARRA stimulus funding and in the health care reform law (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) was more efficient and cost effective provision of health services. One possible way to accomplish this for those who experience mental health and addiction problems is to integrate the care they receive for all illnesses, physical and behavioral. The National Council has been at the forefront of this movement. Their snagging of this grant demonstrates their commitment to the cause of integrating primary and behavioral health care for vulnerable populations. The press release indicates the following:

The Center will provide training and technical assistance to 56 organizations that have collectively been awarded more than $26.2 million in grants as well as to community health centers and other primary care and behavioral health organizations. According to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, these grants are part of an unprecedented push by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to help prevent and reduce chronic disease and promote wellness by treating behavioral health needs on an equal footing with other health conditions.

When I have mentioned this topic in previous blog articles, the response has been disbelief that such integration will occur any time soon. After all, behavioral health private practitioners of our generation are not likely to dramatically change the way in which they practice, and now they mostly practice independently of medical settings.

In fact, it is even the case that many of our community-based behavioral health  organizations have a hard time seeing themselves moving toward providing primary care services for their consumers. At least one of our customers tried establishing a primary care facility as part of their organization a couple of years ago. The service did not take hold and they closed it. Perhaps they were too far ahead of the curve to be successful.

According to the National Council, the motivation to integrate general and behavioral health care among the chronically and seriously mentally ill is the significantly shorter lifespan experienced by those with serious mental illnesses.

According to a 2006 national survey, persons with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression have lower than average life expectancy and die, on average, at the age of 53 — often from untreated and preventable chronic illnesses like hypertension, diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. Lack of access to primary care and specialty medicine is a critical factor in these tragic outcomes. . . .

The average life expectancy of the population at large in the U.S. in 2006 reached an all time high of 78.1 years. This 25 year difference is unconscionable. It is believed by many in the public health and behavioral health communities that integrating health care services for the seriously mentally ill and chemically dependent populations will encourage treatment regimens that will benefit both physical and mental health.

Most of the organizations active in this integration movement are considered ‘safety net’ providers. Although part of an endangered system,  ‘safety net providers are providers that deliver a significant level of health care to uninsured, Medicaid, and other vulnerable patients.’ They are the health care safety net that is intended to keep vulnerable populations from falling through the cracks in our costly and difficult to navigate health care system.

Are any of our readers among the 56 organizations that have received grant funding to develop integrated physical and behavioral health services? Do you see this as a possible and worthwhile goal for private practitioners to move toward? What changes in training models and practice models would need to occur to integrate primary and behavioral health care?

Let us know your thoughts about these issues. Please enter your comments below.

OpenNotes Project: Where does mental health fit in?

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On Monday of this week, Seth asked me if I had a topic for my current blog. As I had none at hand, he pointed me to last week’s episode of the podcast/NPR show, Science Friday. Seth is a regular subscriber to this series and I listen when I find the time. That effort is always rewarded by fascinating discussions of current science issues. For the science professional, wanna-be-scientist or interested layperson, this show is a ready source of truly valuable information.

On Friday, July 30, 2010 the discussion topic was a medical records project called OpenNotes. With the advent of electronic medical records (EMRs) and patient portals into the medical records system, it is only reasonable to begin to consider the nature of the records that physicians keep on their patients. The OpenNotes project is an attempt to allow some 25,000 patients direct access to what 100 participating primary care physicians write in their notes after seeing them.

The project will study the experiences of both the physicians and patients, the impact on work flow of such note taking/sharing, the possible increase in communications between patient and physician, and the reactions of both sets of participants to their experiences. The details of the study are published in an Annals of Internal Medicine article, Open Notes: Doctors and Patients Signing On.

The Science Friday discussion included concerns about sharing sensitive information with the patient and the ability of the patient to understand and process the information included in the note. It has especially been argued that the mental health patient might be too fragile to be exposed to the psychotherapist’s or the psychiatrist’s true evaluation of their status as stated in the progress note.

On the other hand, Concurrent (Collaborative) Documentation has been touted by some community behavioral health specialists as an essential tool for increasing both quality and efficiency of client interactions while simultaneously increasing client buy-in to the treatment plan. The New York State Office of Mental Health writes:

It has been suggested that Concurrent Collaborative Progress Notes were the ‘way to go’. What about uninterrupted direct face to face contact as the best way to achieve high rates of engagement and retention in our clinics?

Concurrent documentation does not require the clinician to take notes during a session or to detach themselves from the recipient. Rather it is advised that at the end of the session, a brief review of the session takes place and the recipient and clinician collaboratively record the progress note. This process supports the delivery of person centered services and often provides the clinician with important feedback about the recipient’s perspective and information obtained from the session.

The process of creating this record concurrent with the meeting and collaboratively with the client is the epitome of an open record. While the OpenNotes project does not go quite this far, it certainly opens the door in this direction. Since the patient owns the record, it seems only fair that they should have easy access to that record and even participate in its creation.

My background as a Feminist Therapist has long given me a strong leaning in this direction. In the view of Feminist Therapy, the treating professional is a consultant having special expertise who is hired by the client to assist them in solving their “problem”. This is certainly also the case in the medical office. The physician has expertise the patient is seeking in their efforts to treat illness and to live healthier lives. This collaborative relationship is more a meeting of equals working together for the patient’s benefit than a dictation of treatment by an authority-figure intent on successful treatment and risk management.

What do you think about opening progress notes to your patients and consumers of service? How would that change the work done by the provider of services? How do you imagine it would change the experience of the consumer?

Please share your comments below.

Managed Care Organizations Oppose Parity

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An organization called the Coalition for Parity, Inc. comprised of managed behavioral health organizations (MBHOs) has filed suit to halt the implementation of the Paul Wellstone and Pete Dominici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. This group has as some of its members Value Options, Magellan Health Services Inc., and Beacon Health Strategies Inc.

As reported by Open Minds and American Psychological Association Practice Organization, the lawsuit challenges the rulemaking process and has requested a temporary restraining order to stop the rulemaking process from moving forward. They argue that the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury overstepped their rulemaking authority in how they interpreted the statutory language and violated federal rulemaking procedure in publishing the rule as they did. While the judge denied the temporary restraining order because the law will not be enforced until July 1, 2010, the court will hear the case as presented by the parties to the action.

On May 9, 2010, the NY Times reported that insurance companies and employer groups are also objecting to the rules.

In a suit over the rules, Magellan and other companies said the concept of nonquantitative limits was “boundless and ill defined” and would reach virtually every policy and procedure used to manage mental health benefits.

As most mental health providers can readily attest, the procedures used by insurers and managed care organizations to limit costs and usage of behavioral health services have themselves been “boundless and ill defined”; after all, a treatment plan certainly could not be a valid treatment plan if it is printed on the wrong form. The MBHOs have been innovative in their development of “every policy and procedure used to manage mental health benefits.” Unfortunately, most of that management has consisted of denying or limiting the amount of service provided and placing onerous requirements on providers.

The NYTimes article states that:

One premise of the law is that mental illnesses often have a biological basis and can be treated as effectively as many physical ailments. But insurers say it is impossible to use the same techniques in managing the treatment of colon cancer and schizophrenia, or heart failure and major depression.

What do you think? Is it reasonable to assume that mental illness and addiction can be managed using the same techniques as are used to manage the treatment of cancer or heart disease?

Please share your comments below.

Resources for Behavioral Health Providers

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I read lots of articles online…or I download the articles and read them in .pdf format. Seth found a free tool that is going to make this whole reading and organizing process easier for me. It is called PDF-XChange Viewer and it can be downloaded for FREE! If you like to highlight and make notes as you go, this is a great tool.

That resource is really just a lead-in. In case you have not already collected some of the following sources from my references to them in other articles, I am going to put them all in one place. These are newsletters and web sites that are chock full of information that can help you stay informed about changes in the health care and regulatory world.

  1. My favorite by far is The National Council (NCCBH). This organization produces regular newsletters on varied topics, but I find their Public Policy Update to be an invaluable source of information on laws and regulations, policy trends and how you can address them. I have also greatly enjoyed their Webinars. Ordinarily, I would have already registered for the program coming up on Friday, May 14, What is an Accountable Care Organization and Why Should I Care? Since I will be out of town, I won’t be able to attend when it is broadcast; instead, I will watch it at a later date from the web site. The best part is that these programs are free and you do not need to be a member to participate in them. They are provided as a service to the behavioral health community.
  2. Every Monday, I receive a free multi-paged newsletter from the Mercom Capital Group, LLC of Austin, TX and Bangalore, India. This newsletter pulls capsules of information from a large variety of sources providing a quick overview of events in the domain of health care technology and health care policy. If you are interested in trying it out, send your email address to Raj at HIT@mercomcapital.com. 
  3. Open Minds is a longstanding and thorough source of industry information and strategy specifically for behavioral health provider organizations. While there are an abundance of workshops, webinars and premium programs, the Open Minds Circle is a free-for-the-registering newsletter from founder Monica Oss and others at Open Minds.
  4. Behavioral Healthcare and Healthcare Informatics (products of the Vendome Group), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology all have mass quantities of information to offer you, all available online.

The amazing thing to me is that this is just a small list. If you were to add in blogs, the amount of free, high-quality information available to you on the web is overwhelming. Choose wisely…and use that free .pdf markup tool to make it easier!

Please share with the rest of our readers sources of behavioral health industry information upon which you rely. Just enter your comments in the box below.