Advancing Public Policies for People with Mental Illness, Chemical Dependency or Developmental Disabilities
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Opioid Overdoses Everywhere in Monroe County
Just about every village and town in Monroe County had a resident who suffered an opioid overdose last year, according to data that law enforcement compiled in order to track the epidemic.
Greece had 72 residents who overdosed and Henrietta had 28. Gates and Irondequoit each had 21, and Penfield and East Rochester each had 14. No corner of the county escaped: Two residents each of Sweden and Clarkson, and one resident each of Wheatland, Parma, Mendon and Churchville overdosed.
Throughout the county, at least 743 residents overdosed on an opioid, including 395 city residents. Countywide, at least 139 residents died. Read more
here.
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SAMHSA is Accepting Applications for Up to $76 million in Drug Court Funding
SAMHSA is accepting applications for up to $76 million through its SAMHSA Treatment Drug Courts grant program. The money will be used to help drug courts break the cycle of criminal behavior and incarceration related to drug and alcohol use.
The purpose of the SAMHSA Treatment Drug Courts grant is to expand substance use disorder treatment services in existing adult problem solving courts and adult Tribal Healing to Wellness courts. These courts use the treatment drug court model to provide substance use disorder treatment.
The grants will be used to expand the services offered by courts to serve more people with treatment needs. Grantees will combine the sanctioning power of treatment courts with effective substance use disorder treatment. Read more here. |
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SAMHSA is Accepting Applications for up to $39.8 Million for the Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment Program
SAMHSA is accepting applications for the Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) program totaling up to $39.8 million over the next five years.
The purpose of this program is to implement screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment services for adolescents and adults in primary care and community health settings for substance misuse and substance use disorders. This program is designed to expand the identification of, and enhance the care for, individuals who have or are at risk for a substance use disorder. SAMHSA expects to fund as many as eight grantees with up to $995,000 per year for up to five years. The actual award amount may vary, depending on the availability of funds. Read more
here.
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January 18, 12 - 1 pm, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
January 31, 2 - 3:30 pm, SAMHSA-HRSA
February 16, 12 - 1 pm, CTAC
What Are the Megatrends Shaping Data-Driven Healthcare?
February 27, 1 - 2 pm, Manatt Health
March 28, 12 - 1 pm, PsychU
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Office Closed - MLK Day
January 15
Children & Families Committee Meeting
January 16: 11:30 am - 1 pm,
GTM
Directors & Executive Committee Combined Meeting
January 17: 9:30 - 12:30 pm
GTM
Developmental Disabilities Committee Meeting
January 25: 1 - 2:30 pm, GTM
Contact CLMHD for all Call In and Go To Meeting information, 518.462.9422
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Syracuse Hospital to Build Long-Awaited Psych Unit for Teens
Senate Democrats are pushing for an extra $25 billion to be included in any final budget agreement to combat the opioid epidemic.The state has approved a plan by Upstate University Hospital to open an 8-bed inpatient psychiatric unit for teenagers, a project Upstate has been considering for 13 years.
The $3.2 million unit on the seventh floor of Upstate's main hospital downtown will open in 2019. It will provide treatment for 12- to 17-year-olds for five to seven days.
Every day an average of eight children and teens are at Upstate awaiting transfer to a facility that provides inpatient psychiatric care. Other area hospital emergency rooms also see youngsters waiting to get into inpatient facilities.
Children are often transferred out of the area to facilities as far away as Buffalo and Saratoga Springs. Read more here.
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SAMHSA Takes Steps to Fix a Fractured Mental Health Care System Following Report of Congressionally Mandated Committee
As part of a blue-ribbon panel that recently issued a report to Congress detailing problems within the American mental healthcare system, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is working to help transform that system and better serve people in need.
The Interdepartmental Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee (ISMICC), an advisory committee created by the 21st Century Cures Act, was established to address the needs of adults with serious mental illnesses (SMI) and children and youth with serious emotional disturbances (SED) and their families. Last month, ISMICC formally delivered to Congress a 108-page report that detailed deficiencies in the country's treatment services for Americans living with serious mental illness. SAMHSA's efforts to build upon the Report's insights can be seen in policy implementations under way. Read more
here.
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Justice Department Examining NY's Confinement of Sexual Predators
The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division is examining New York's controversial system of civil confinement for sex offenders.
The probe was revealed when an attorney with the Justice Department's special litigation office recently interviewed a sex offender confined at the Central New York Psychiatric Center in Oneida County.
Under New York's decade-old Sex Offender Management and Treatment Act, convicted sex offenders can be kept in secure psychiatric hospitals indefinitely after their prison terms expire. If an offender is found to have a mental abnormality that makes the person likely to commit another sex crime, the state can - after a court hearing - order the offender committed as a patient in a secure psychiatric hospital. (There are currently no women in civil confinement.)
Read more
here.
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SAMHSA Issues Final Rule Updating Substance Abuse Confidentiality Regulations
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has finalized proposed changes to the Confidentiality of Substance Use Disorder Patient Records regulation, 42 CFR Part 2, aimed at supporting payment and healthcare operations activities while protecting the confidentiality of patients.
The finalized rule,
posted to the Federal Register on Tuesday, where it is available for review, builds on changes to 42 CFR Part 2 made last year. In a final rule published last January, SAMHSA updated 42 CFR Part 2 rules by allowing patients to provide a general disclosure for substance abuse information, rather than limiting authorization to a specific provider.
Read more
here
.
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HHS Will Let States Require People To Work For Medicaid
The Trump Administration is encouraging states to require "able-bodied" Medicaid recipients to work or volunteer in order to keep their health insurance coverage.
On Thursday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued new
guidelines for states that want some adults to work in exchange for the health insurance coverage.
Under the rules, states can require Medicaid beneficiaries to work, volunteer or participate in job training. People who are elderly or disabled, and pregnant women and children, would be excluded. Read more
here.
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Department of Health Grant Opportunity:
Statewide Health Care Facility Transformation Program II
The New York State Department of Health recently announced the availability of funds under the Statewide Health Care Facility Transformation Program II, established pursuant
to Section 2825-e of the Public Health Law.
A total of up to $203,782,888 is available through this Request for Applications (RFA #17648 ) to health care providers that are deemed by the Commissioner to fulfill or will fulfill a health care need for acute inpatient, outpatient, primary, home care or residential health care services in a community. A minimum of $46,995,507 of this total amount is available for community-based health care providers, which are defined as diagnostic and treatment centers, mental health and alcohol and substance abuse treatment clinics, primary care providers and home care providers.
The objective of the Statewide Health Care Facility Transformation Program II is to provide grants to health care providers that support capital projects, debt retirement, working capital or other non-capital projects that facilitate health care transformation activities including, but not limited to, merger, consolidation, acquisition or other activities intended to create financially sustainable systems of care or preserve or expand essential health care services. Read more here.
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Feds Close 'Evidence Based' National Registry for Mental Health Programs
School districts looking for interventions to prevent teen drug use and boost students' mental health may soon have one less place to turn.
The National Institute of Mental Health has put a halt on the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices. The center, which had been recently redesigned, reviews interventions intended to reduce mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse. It includes a database of some 500 programs judged to be scientifically valid and effective, including in several areas of concern to schools, like teen suicide prevention and the use of arts programs for social-emotional learning.
Read more here.
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Using Pay for Success in Medicaid Managed Care and Value-Based Purchasing Initiatives
In discussing Medicaid, we often use jargon, acronyms, and maxims. Pay for value, not volume. Address social determinants of health (SDOH).
Now, we have a new maxim: Pay for Success (PFS). Over the past few years, states and localities have used PFS principles to fund
supports for at-risk moms
,
in-home asthma assessments
, and
supportive housing
. PFS projects typically address SDOH, while maintaining an aggressive focus on outcomes. But until recently, only one state,
South Carolina
, has used PFS in its Medicaid program.
What Matters: Investing in Results to Build Strong, Vibrant Communities, a recent book published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Nonprofit Finance Fund, discusses the potential impact of PFS on public sector programs. Read more
here.
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For Some With Intellectual Disabilities, Ending Abuse Starts With Sex Ed
In the sex education class for adults with intellectual disabilities, the material is not watered down. The dozen women and men in a large room full of windows and light in Casco, Maine, take on complex issues, such as how to break up or how you know you're in an abusive relationship. And the most difficult of those issues is sexual assault.
Katy Park, the teacher, begins the class with a phrase they've memorized: "My body is my own," Park starts as the rest join in, "and I get to decide what is right for me."
People with intellectual disabilities are sexually assaulted at a rate more than seven times that for people without disabilities. NPR asked the U.S. Department of Justice to use data it had collected, but had not published, to calculate that rate.
At a moment when Americans are talking about sexual assault and sexual harassment, a yearlong NPR investigation finds that people with intellectual disabilities are one of the most at-risk groups in America. Read more
here.
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Cross-Sector Service Use Among High Health Care Utilizers After Medicaid Expansion
The expansion of Medicaid coverage through the Affordable Care Act improved coverage for millions of low-income Americans. This population is known to have high rates of substance use disorders, mental illness, criminal justice involvement, and homelessness - which are associated with high emergency department and hospital services use, as well as involvement in other public sectors such as supportive housing.
Interventions aimed at reducing acute health care use among these high-need, high-cost individuals often focus on the integration of social and behavioral support within traditional medical care. Yet, planning and evaluation of integrated care models requires data on cross-sector service use and costs - data that are often difficult to merge across sectors.
A new article, in the January 2018 issue of Health Affairs, explores the results of a novel cross-sector data analysis - including health care, criminal justice, housing, and human services sectors - that looked at service use and costs of Medicaid expansion enrollees in Hennepin County, Minnesota. The article shares key finding from the full study, which was made possible through CHCS' Complex Care Innovation Lab. Read more here.
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