Mental Health Services Should Be More Accessible in Primary Care Settings
Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (HHS)

A new report released today by three agencies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposes strategies to overcome barriers associated with the reimbursement of mental health services provided in primary care settings. Key actions recommended focus on a variety of stakeholders, including primary care providers, state Medicaid officials, and others billing for mental health services in the public sector, working together to promote a greater understanding of mental health reimbursement policy .
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Mental health service consumers, practitioners, providers, researchers and government officials identified seven barriers and made suggestions for action aimed at alleviating the barriers to the reimbursement of mental health services in the primary care setting.

The main priorities and actions recommended in the conclusions of the report, Reimbursement of Mental Health Services in Primary Care, include the following:

• Increase leadership collaboration at the federal and state levels among government policymakers in Medicare, Medicaid, primary care, and mental health to ensure clarity in policies, rules, and procedures, and to promote the provision and reimbursement of mental health services in primary care settings;
• Broadly disseminate clarified policies and procedures to patients, payers, practitioners, providers, and managers of care;
• Provide technical assistance and education to states, practitioners, providers, and managed care organizations;
• Encourage flexibility in state Medicaid benefit designs to cover mental health services in primary care settings, modeling changes based on best practices achieved through existing state Medicaid waivers;
• Increase payment for professional services by non-physician practitioners under Medicare and Medicaid, particularly in underserved rural and urban areas;
• Implement policies at the state level for appropriate reimbursement of telemedicine services; and,
• Provide reimbursement for mental health prevention and screening services.

+ Full Report (PDF; 1.4 MB)

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 9:02 am and is filed under Health and healthcare, Mental health and substance abuse. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.