Budget Subcommittees Led by Very Knowledgeable MDs Interested in Behavioral Health

Each year there is one main hearing in the budget subcommittee in each house focused almost exclusively on our issues. The hearings this year were on March 30th in the Senate and April 3rd in the Assembly. I have been a lobbyist for behavioral health for more than 30 years, and I don't recall there ever being a time when both hearings were chaired by physicians.  Dr. Richard Pan is a pediatrician who chairs the Senate budget subcommittee on Health and Human Services.  Karen Baylor, Deputy Director for Behavioral Health at the Department of Health Care Services, (and formerly Behavioral Health Director of San Luis Obispo County) commented, "I could tell you more than you'll ever want to know about our public behavioral health services system."  Dr. Pan responded that he would take her up on that offer, and showed continued interest by asking detailed questions about nearly every issue, wanting to truly understand our challenges and opportunities.

School and Primary Care Prevention and Early Intervention

Dr. Pan has regularly expressed strong interest in prevention and early intervention, particularly in schools and primary care.  These are two of the cornerstones of prevention and early intervention.  He shares CCCBHA's goal of making it a routine part of every primary care visit to screen for behavioral health conditions and when there is a need, making sure there is a warm handoff to a behavioral health professional who can provide an immediate initial assessment and begin a treatment program.  Similarly, he attended the Oversight Commission's initial School Mental Health forum.  We also hope that it will become a standard practice of schools to have a mechanism to identify students' social or emotional behavioral health challenges at the earliest opportunity... More

Now is Our Time to Develop Alternative Crisis Systems to Divert People from Jails and Hospitals

Assembly Member Dr. Joaquin Arambula is an emergency room physician and chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Health and Human Services.  In presenting to him on the need to restore funding for the Children's Crisis Care System facilities, which are an alternative to emergency rooms, I commented how humbling it was to present this to an emergency room physician who probably understands this issue better than I ever could.

After the hearing I spoke to him and told him that my top priority in the remaining years of my career was to completely end the pattern of police taking people to the emergency room or jails.  I stated that in most cases they did this simply because these were the only places that would take everyone.

We now know that there are alternatives.  They are expensive to establish in the short term but they clearly save money for cities, counties, and the state in the long run in both healthcare and criminal justice...  More

What is the State Role in Workforce Now That the One Time MHSA Funding is Ending?

At the Assembly budget hearing, there was a lengthy discussion on behavioral health workforce.  I requested this discussion on behalf of CCCBHA noting that the MHSA was written to shift the responsibility for workforce strategy from a state set-aside to County MHSA plans and programs.

I commented that when we wrote Proposition 63, we didn't know how big the workforce problem would remain after the initial set aside money was spent, so we left it up to County plans.  However, it seems that, if anything, the workforce problems are even worse now than they were 12 years ago.  Also, it is not just a problem for the public mental health system.  Commercial plans are under pressure to expand... More