Use Your Voice.
Exercise Your Power
as a Constituent.
Have you had trouble finding the right mental health professional for your needs?
Have you been on a long wait list for an available appointment?
Had to wait weeks or months for a screening or evaluation for yourself, your child, or loved one?
Please take action!
Our legislation won’t move out of Committee unless we make some noise.
The bills’ sponsors are counting on us!
Please Call or Email
-
Your State Representative and State Senator. Click here to find your legislators.
- Speaker Shekarchi (401) 222-2466
Ask them to pass House Bill 6268, House Bill 5546, and Senate Bill 591 out of their respective Committees.
About These Bills:
If passed, this legislation would increase the amount paid by insurers to behavioral health providers. The aim is to achieve reimbursement parity between behavioral health providers and their counterparts on the medical side of insurance plans. Currently, behavioral health providers get paid an average of 23.4% less. Because of this, fewer and fewer behavioral health providers are participating in insurance networks. The result is that people must go on waitlists to see a mental health professional for therapy, medication management, evaluations, or screenings. We are entitled to prompt access to mental health treatment when we need it!
Tips for Your Call or Email:
- Be brief - maximum 2 pages for written correspondence or 2 minutes for a phone call
- Be sure to provide your full name and contact information in your letter or phone call
- Next, share your own story, or that of a loved one. Constituent voices carry a lot of weight. Highlight any barriers or challenges you experience(d) in finding the right professional for help – for example: a long wait-list, discharged from hospital without a follow-up plan, had to go out-of-state OR pay out-of-pocket, etc.
- In your written testimony, state your support for the bills because they will help to strengthen our state’s network of available providers.
You Can Read The Bills:
Additional Talking Points You Can Use:
- Paying behavioral health providers less than their counterparts on the medical side of an insurance plan is a violation of mental health parity laws.
- Rhode Island has a shortage of in-network providers, from therapists and counselors to psychologists and psychiatrists. People with mental illness often get prescriptions for mental health conditions from primary care doctors. (Are cancer patients treated by primary care docs or oncologists? Do patients with heart disease see cardiologists or primary care doctors? People with mental illness deserve to see specialists too.)
- The State’s shortage of in-network providers is about to get worse. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an increase in depression, anxiety and substance use. Now that the pandemic is subsiding and public life is opening up again, we are bracing for a surge of people seeking mental/behavioral health services. Our current supply will not meet the demand.
- People of Color and immigrants have difficulty finding a provider who looks like them and shares their culture and/or language
- Consumers have to go on long waitlists to see providers with certain areas of expertise
- Consumers have to make call after call after call to find in-network providers who are taking new patients
- Insurers offer “ghost networks” of providers who are licensed but not necessarily in that plan’s network; are no longer taking new clients; are booking several months out for appointments; only see patients discharged from certain affiliated hospitals; or are not even practicing anymore.
- Providers have not had a rate increase in a number of years
- The cost of doing business has increased and providers are struggling to pay their bills; some are taking on loans, and others are at risk of going out of business
- If you or your organization has experienced financial hardship due to low reimbursement rates, please share your story. Provide specific numbers to demonstrate your case. Look at your client caseload. Group them by insurance and explain where the deficits are. Provide specific numbers.
