Congress Moves to Approve Final Spending Bill Before Government Shutdown Deadline
Congressional appropriators on Thursday unveiled legislative text for the final spending package for fiscal year 2024. The House will vote first on this six-bill “minibus,” which contains the appropriations bills for Labor-HHS-Education, Defense, Financial Services and General Government, Homeland Security, State-Foreign Operations, and Legislative Branch during a Friday session.
The Senate is moving quickly to review the package before the federal funding deadline expires at midnight. Absent this “time agreement,” a brief weekend shutdown could be possible while the bill works its way to the president’s desk.
Negotiations between House and Senate leadership broke down on another skinny health package. This deal would have included additional funding for community health centers, PBM reforms and price transparency provisions, as well as extensions for the
Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act (PAHPA) and the
Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment Act (SUPPORT). Lawmakers may consider these provisions during the congressional lame duck session after the elections.
In the bill, HHS is set to receive an increase of $955 million above the current funding level to more than $117 billion. Behavioral healthcare funding includes more than $4.6 billion to support substance use prevention and treatment efforts to address the rising toll of opioid overdoses; $2 billion for the Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Services Block Grant; $1.575 billion for State Opioid Response grants; $145 million for the Rural Communities Opioid Response Program; and $1 billion for the Mental Health Block Grant. The bill also provides $153 million for the Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program to support community-based clinical training and strengthen the mental health workforce through repayment of education loans for individuals working in either a Mental Health Professional Shortage Area or where the overdose death rate exceeds the national average.
The package allocates $42 million to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) for the Office of the Advancement of Telehealth (OAT) for expenses, grants, contracts and “cooperative agreements for the advancement of telehealth activities; $1 million to connect rural veterans to health care facilities; and $20.9 million for rural hospitals to adopt health information technology
.
The bill also provides an $18 million increase for the 988 Suicide Prevention Lifeline, building on the nearly $400 million increase in fiscal year 2023. The proposed boost comes after GOP leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee requested that the Government Accountability Office
audit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) oversight of funds to the lifeline, saying more than half of designated funding has gone unused.
Register Today for Next Week’s NABH Education and Research Foundation Workforce Webinar
There’s still time to register for the
NABH Education and Research Foundation’s workforce webinar on
Tuesday, March 26 from 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. ET.
Next week’s webinar is the first in a two-part series that explores talent recruitment and retention.
Foundation Vice President Jim Shaheen, CEO of New Season/Colonial Management Group, LP, Foundation Secretary Mary Pawlikowski, president at Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics, and workforce consultant Beth Kuhn of
Stonegate Strategies will lead participants in an interactive discussion to share their talent-recruitment and retention challenges, as well as their best, short-term strategies to address those problems. These practices include re-organizing recruitment teams to align with operations, developing alumni outreach initiatives, streamlining an organization’s onboarding process, conducting stay interviews, and more.
Please join us and click here to register for Part I on March 26 at 2 p.m. ET!
The second webinar in this series will examine longer-term solutions to recruiting talent – such as Registered Apprenticeship Programs, education and certification opportunities, fellowships, and more – on
Thursday, April 18 at 2 p.m. ET.
NABH Board Chair Frank Ghinassi, Ph.D., A.B.P.P. president and CEO, Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care and senior vice president, Behavioral Health and Addictions Service Line, RWJBarnabas Health, will lead the April webinar along with Kuhn and workforce consultant
John Pallasch of One Workforce Solutions. Pallasch served previously as the assistant secretary for employment and training at the U.S. Labor Department.
Please join us and click here to register for Part II on April 18!
HHS Needs Your Feedback to Help Develop a Behavioral Healthcare Data Set
Through next Friday, March 29, HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) – the federal agency that standardizes information technology requirements for healthcare providers – is collecting information about specific data elements to include in a new behavioral healthcare data set. NABH encourages you to help with this important project.
The task is a joint
effort between ONC and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to create the draft
United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) + BH to address core data and interoperability for behavioral health needs beyond the scope of the USCDI. In December 2023, ONC launched a new
USCDI+ platform to support the organization, linking of domains, and functionality to solicit and receive feedback for all USCDI+ domains.
HHS’ goal with this activity is to confirm the data points needed to improve and advance care continuity for patients who see behavioral healthcare providers and other healthcare providers. Survey respondents will identify the specific data metrics from among 187 options – such as the patient’s address, insurance information, clinical data points, and more – that HHS should collect, as well as items that HHS should not collect.
Your expertise will help develop an eventual government-endorsed data set for the behavioral healthcare field and also influence a separate HHS effort to develop a future behavioral health information technology system.
Behavioral Health Information Technology, or BHIT, is one of NABH’s top advocacy priorities, so we strongly urge you and your teams’ health IT experts to complete ONC’s survey by no later than Friday, March 29.
Meanwhile, NABH is working with its committees to prepare an association comment letter to ONC. Please contact
Sarah Wattenberg with any questions.
White House Announces Challenge to Save Lives from Overdose
The Biden administration has announced
The White House Challenge to Save Lives from Overdose, a nationwide call to action to stakeholders from all sectors to save lives by increasing training about and access to life-saving opioid overdose reversal medications.
The White House urges organizations, philanthropists, local governments, and businesses large and small to participate in a variety of ways, such as training 100% of an organization’s employees on how and when to use an opioid reversal medication; ensure an opioid overdose reversal medication is in every first aid kit in worksites and schools; and purchase and distribute opioid overdose reversal medications to a certain number of employees.
Click
here to learn more about the challenge.
2024 Annual Meeting Hotel Reservation Cutoff Date is Approaching!
Please
reserve your hotel room today at the Salamander Washington, DC for the 2024 NABH Annual Meeting from May 13-15, 2024! The Salamander, Washington DC’s reservation cutoff date is
Sunday, April 14.
And please remember to
register for this year’s Annual Meeting,
The Future of Behavioral Healthcare, if you haven’t done so yet. The Annual Meeting’s preliminary program will be available soon.
We look forward to seeing you in Washington!
Advertise in the 2024 NABH Exhibitor and Sponsor Guide!
NABH will distribute the
2024 NABH Exhibitor and Sponsor Guide to all registrants at the 2024 NABH Annual Meeting from May 13-15 at the Salamander Washington, DC. Be sure your organization is included in it!
All ads are due by next Friday, March 29, 2024. Please click
here for details about advertising options, requirements, payment, and more.
The association also will send the guide to all NABH members after the meeting and post it on the NABH Annual Meeting webpage.
Reminder: Please Submit Data to NABH’ Denial-of-Care Portal
NABH thanks all members who have submitted data to the association’s
Denial-of-Care Portal. You have provided critical information that expands the portal and helps NABH strengthen its advocacy efforts related to erroneous prior-authorization denials.
With guidance from our members, NABH has improved the portal by adding two elements:
- Time-based data on the number of days between a request for coverage and a plan’s denial, which improves our ability to assess and compare health plan responsiveness.
- The gap between days of provided care versus days of covered care to quantify and compare uncompensated days per health plan.
We strongly encourage all NABH members to submit their denial-of-care data in the portal. If you need help starting, or if you have other questions, please e-mail NABH Associate Manager for Congressional Affairs
Emily Wilkins.
In Case You Missed It: NABH’s 2024 Advocacy Priorities
NABH has released its
2024 Advocacy Priorities, which we urge you to read and share with your Government Relations teams.
Topping NABH’s priorities this year are parity, workforce, behavioral healthcare information technology, America’s ongoing addiction crisis, and the Institutions for Mental Diseases (IMD) exclusion.
Fact of the Week
A recent JAMA
study reported Delta 8-THC use prevalence is appreciable among U.S. adolescents and is higher in states without marijuana legalization or existing Delta 8-THC regulations. The study noted that prioritizing surveillance, policy, and public health efforts addressing adolescent Delta 8-THC use may be warranted.
For questions or comments about this CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond.