Fitzsimon File

Wednesday afternoon State Health and Human Services Secretary Dempsey Benton made his first appearance before state lawmakers since a News & Observer series revealed patient abuse and unreported deaths at mental hospitals and massive overbilling by private companies for community support services.

Benton didn’t mention the controversy surrounding Governor Mike Easley’s decision to fire Health and Human Services Public Director Debbie Crane or Easley’s bizarre claim that his administration vigorously opposed the 2001 mental health reform efforts.  That was probably a wise decision on Benton’s part.

But he did address many of the problems in the mental health system that he is now charging with fixing, both issues raised in the newspaper series and concerns of mental health advocates and consumers of state services.

The early coverage of Benton’s appearance before the Mental Health Oversight Committee focused on his push to put government back in the business of providing some basic services in some areas of the state. That is a major change from the privatization efforts in the 2001 reforms.

Benton also repeated his pledge to make sure that every death in a state facility is reported to the medical examiner, and gave an update on the new Central Regional Hospital in Butner that will now open July 1.

Most of Benton’s report has been public before now, but it was still a sobering reminder of just how bad things remain in the mental health system as a result of the 2001 reforms.

Benton told lawmakers that crisis services are still not available consistently across the state.  Community service capacity has decreased by 15 percent since 2002, a clear indicator that the reform efforts haven’t begun to fulfill their promise. As many as 400,000 people with mental health or substance abuse problems show up in emergency rooms every year.

The appeals process for patients denied services is running much longer than the 90 day goal, but there has been some progress reducing the problems with community support services that the News & Observer series said was wasting as much as $400 million.

Benton talked about consolidating the administrative functions of several Local Management Entities, which were created by the 2001 reform to manage mental health services.

The discussion turned repeatedly to an outside consultant’s report, which may be available as early as next week. It is likely to include more recommendations for the General Assembly to consider.

Benton says his proposals could cost up to $70 million, which may not be a big percentage of the state’s $20 billion budget, but it won’t be easy to find this year, unless lawmakers make mental health a top priority.

Some legislators, like Sen. Martin Nesbitt and Rep. Verla Insko, the co-chairs of the Oversight Committee, have been trying to do that for several years, with limited success. Thanks to Benton, the Easley Administration seems finally willing to share in the struggle to move up mental health on the priority list of legislative leaders and in budget deliberations.

Better very late than never, though as Benton himself pointed out this week, there’s an awfully big mountain to climb in remaking system that is supposed to take care of people with a mental illness, developmental disability, or addiction.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 7:05 am and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.