N.C. health officials outline plan to improve mental-health system
Wednesday, May 31st, 2006
By Chris Fitzsimon
Agenda calls for more pay for psychiatrists, money for training
By David Ingram JOURNAL RALEIGH BUREAU
RALEIGH
Faced with a shortage of psychiatrists across North Carolina, health officials said yesterday that they want to pay psychiatrists 33 percent more for some treatments for patients eligible for Medicaid.
The change would affect about 300 psy-chiatrists and cost the state between $1.5 million and $3 million, officials said. They said they see the money as an investment, possibly resulting in fewer visits to emergency rooms and savings in other areas.
Officials also said they plan to redirect mo-ney to encourage training more psychiatrists.
"We simply don’t have enough psychiatrists, especially child psychiatrists, to meet our needs," said Dr. Allen Dobson, the assistant secretary for healthy policy and medical assistance in the N.C. Department of Health and Hu-man Services.
The changes were part of a five-page "Action Agenda" released yesterday by Carmen Hooker Odom, the secretary of health and human services, and her staff. The agenda outlines plans for improving the state’s mental-health system, which began moving toward privatized, local care in 2001.
A survey by the N.C. Psychiatric Association, a trade organization, found a 13.5 percent drop from 2003 to 2005 in the number of full-time-equi-valent psychiatrists working for the state mental-health system.
Robin Huffman, the executive director of the group, said that a higher Medicaid reimbursement rate might help bring psychiatrists back to the system.
Huffman said, however, that many psychiatrists have other objections about how the system is run.
"We want to make sure the mo-ney goes to making sure patients are being taken care of, and that it’s not going to administration," she said. (more…)
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