Our regulatory reform effort in Licensing is rolling along. We’ve already held rules work group meetings with representatives from behavioral health inpatient and residential facilities and are incorporating the Stakeholder comments into our next iteration of our draft rules. In November, we’ll start holding rules work group meetings with representatives from behavioral health outpatient settings. This’ll truly [...]
The future health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act will need to offer an Essential Benefit Package. In fact, most health insurance plans will need to cover each state’s Essential Benefit Package starting New Year’s Day in 2014. There are 10 key service categories that future plans will need to cover- including behavioral health services. States need [...]
One of our priorities over the last 3.5 years has been to ensure that we develop and train our workforce so that we maintain business continuity and have the ability to transition effectively to new leadership when the time comes (part of Strategic Map element E1). We’ll be putting our prep work to the test [...]
Our Request For Purchase (otherwise known as RFP) Core Team (Bob Sorce, Victoria Navarra, Teresita Oaks, and Chris Leavitt) and our entire cast of characters has been doing a full court press for the last 6 months to put together the Scope of Work that we’ll use when we go out for bid for the massive behavioral health services [...]
The Governor and I and the plaintiffs in the 1981 Arnold v. Sarn lawsuit signed a landmark agreement today which will last 2 years (pending the court’s approval). Today’s agreement outlines objectives for supported care and services for folks with a serious mental illness. Over the next couple of years we’ll work together with the [...]
The Governor signed the budget this week - here's a look at how some of it affects public health: Behavioral Health Services for folks that don’t Qualify for Medicaid The budget that was just signed includes about $39M in new funding for services for folks with a serious mental illness that don’t qualify for Medicaid. [...]
We’ll be having a “Request For Information” session regarding our “ Recovery Through Whole Health, the Regional Behavioral Health Authority with Health Homes” project (a.k.a. the upcoming Request for Proposal for behavioral health services in Maricopa County) this Wednesday beginning 1 pm at the Radisson City Center at 3600 N. 2nd Ave. in Phoenix. Our Integration Website [...]
Our Division of Behavioral Health Services recently submitted its combined mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment services State Plan for FY 12-13 to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The Plan that we submitted to SAMHSA doubles as the State Plan that’s required by ARS 36-550.01. The Plan provides an overview of Arizona’s [...]
We’ll be kicking off our newest Rulemaking Adventure on Monday... when we begin the process of putting together Rules for our Licensing shop that streamline and support healthcare integration- allowing the flexibility for healthcare institutions to provide a blend of physical and behavioral health services. The idea is to put together licensing rules that are flexible and [...]
It’s been a while since I mentioned to you that our Division of Licensing has a really good web site called AZ Care Check. Our website provides a 3 year history of survey results, complaint investigation results and if any of our licensed facilities (nursing homes, assisted living, hospital and other medical facilities, childcare or [...]
