Providers brace for mental health cuts
Friday, July 23, 2004 7:39 AM PDT
By Eric Apalategui
Printable version
E-mail this articleAs cuts to the community's mental health services take hold for a few thousand Cowlitz County residents, more patients may slide deeper into illness -- and perhaps land in jail or the emergency room -- before they can get help.
That's because the county's two major mental health providers, responding to budget cuts that reduce mental health coverage for many low-income patients, must focus more of their resources on people who are in a crisis.
"We won't be able to provide the services that are really going to keep people at a low level of (mental health) problems," said Chief Executive Officer Eric Yakovich of the Lower Columbia Mental Health Center.
Yakovich spoke Thursday during a local forum for people who work with mentally ill residents.
By Jan. 1, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services no longer will allow federal money that had been saved from the Medicaid program to help people who are not covered under the federal- and state-funded health insurance plan. The practice had been allowed for more than a decade.
The cuts won't directly hit many adults and children who have Medicaid insurance and those who have comprehensive health coverage or who can afford to pay for care themselves. However, fewer mental health services could put a heavier burden on medical providers, law enforcement and other services, people at the forum said.
Next year, the reductions will hamper between 2,000 and 3,000 low-income people who have little or no insurance coverage. Those patients previously qualified for some services that were paid for with the excess federal Medicaid money.
The switch was announced locally in April, but it took several months for providers to work out all the ramifications.
The mental health center, for example, still plans to see anyone who needs mental health care, Yakovich said. But some patients will get less therapy or other help than they would have previously. And some patients who now are coping will get less preventative care.
"I don't want people to get the impression they can't come to us," he said. The response, however, "is going to be geared toward stabilization, and it's going to be geared to being brief."
In Cowlitz County, Lower Columbia and PeaceHealth's Center for Behavioral Solutions (CBS) provide those mental health services. In a typical year, each program helps at least 1,200 people.
At Lower Columbia, Yakovich said, about half of the $900,000 that had been eligible for other needy patients can now only be used for Medicaid clients. The remaining $450,000 available for non-Medicaid patients includes money from the state and other sources, he said.
Cowlitz County mental health advocates are mulling suggestions to maintain services. Ideas include forming a free clinic, starting a "warm line" service -- essentially a mental health hot line staffed by volunteers rather than care providers -- and helping more people apply for Medicaid.
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