Murthy Vows to Focus on Pandemic’s Mental Health Effects if Confirmed as Surgeon General
U.S. surgeon general nominee Vivek Murthy, M.D. said this week he will focus on the mental health effects of the Covid-19 global pandemic if he is confirmed to the post.
Murthy told
CBS This Morning on Tuesday that the nation is facing a “deeply concerning” increase in mental illness during the pandemic, including among children.
“We know a lot of what we need to do, we just aren’t doing it,” Murthy said in the interview. “We have, for example, programs that we could be investing in schools to help provide mental health counseling to kids to detect symptoms of mental illness,” he continued. “We can train more mental health providers.” Ultimately, Murthy said, the country needs to have a “very different conversation” about mental health.
“If you are struggling with your mental health, that does not mean that you are broken,” Murthy said. “What it means is that you are a human being having a human experience—one that many of us have been going through during this pandemic and many will experience long after the pandemic is over.”
Murthy served as America’s 19th surgeon general from December 2014 until April 2017.
Joint Commission Journal Publishes Report on Staff Emotional Support During Pandemic
The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety this week published a study that examined different interventions that Montefiore Medical Center (MMC) applied to treat psychological distress among staff during the pandemic.
According to the November 2020 study, the health system’s Moses campus admitted two patients diagnosed with Covid-19 a year ago on March 11, 2020. At the time of the study’s writing, more than 6,000 patients were admitted to MMC (including 91% from the Bronx), and more than 2,200 patients and 21 staff died from the virus.
“On March 15, 2020, psychiatry leadership collaborated with leadership from various sectors of MMC to establish the Staff Emotional Support (SES) Team,” the study noted. “Over 10 weeks during the initial phase of the pandemic, the SES Team created a variety of mental health services to meet the needs of as many staff as possible, understanding that individuals respond to traumatic experiences and to support services in diverse ways.”
The study said MMC applied a host of interventions, including psychoeducational resources, a phone support line, staff support centers (SSCs), a clinical treatment program, team support sessions, and more.
“We believe that SSCs were the most frequently used,” the report said, “because they were easily accessible places for respite, refreshment, and recharging and offered a basic forum of human connection not necessarily associated with the potential stigma of seeking formal support.”
IPFQR Webinar Scheduled for Wednesday, March 17
The Quality Reporting Center has scheduled a webinar for participants in the Inpatient Psychiatric Facility Quality Reporting (IPFQR) Program about navigating public reporting websites on Wednesday, March 17 at 2 p.m. ET.
According to an announcement, the presentation will describe how the IPF community can access publicly reported IPFQR program data on the Medicare Care Compare and Provider Data Catalog websites.
Click
here to learn more and to register.
SAMHSA Accepting Applications for MAT-Prescription Drug-Opioid Addiction Grants
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is accepting applications for fiscal year 2021 Medication-Assisted Treatment-Prescription Drug and Opioid Addiction (MAT-PDOA) grants to expand and enhance access to MAT services for individuals with opioid use disorder who are seeking or receiving MAT.
SAMHSA’s announcement said the agency plans to issue about 89-135 awards of up to $1 million per year for states and up to $525,000 per year for other domestic, public or not-for-profit organizations for up to five years.
The deadline to apply is Tuesday, April 27. Click
here to learn more and apply.
Register to Attend the 2021 Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit
The annual Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, known as the largest annual conference that addresses America’s opioid and addiction crises, will be held virtually this year from April 5-8.
The conference will present more than 75 sessions across nine educational tracks and will cover topics ranging from prevention and treatment to public safety and technology. NABH Director of Quality and Addiction Services Sarah Wattenberg will present with representatives from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Veterans Affairs Department in a session titled, “Federal and Private Sector Responses to Opioid Treatment Issues During the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
For additional information, download the conference
brochure, and click
here to register.
Register to Attend the 6th Annual Population Health Payer Innovations for Medicare, Medicaid & Duals
The 6
th Annual Population Health Payer Innovations for Medicare, Medicaid, & Duals will host its conference virtually this year from May 18-19.
Free for hospitals, the conference will address topics such as combatting the opioid crisis, using community paramedics, and partnering clinical and analytic teams to explore value-based insurance design (VBID) models of care. Health plans that focus on Medicaid, Medicare, and dual-eligible beneficiaries, along with providers, will share best practices and how to build and manage population health programs to ensure compliance, improve outcomes, and control costs.
Click
here to learn more and to register.
Save the Date: NABH 2021 Annual Meeting
NABH will host its 2021 Annual Meeting from Wednesday, Oct. 6 – Friday, Oct. 8, 2021 at the Mandarin Oriental Washington, DC.
The association re-scheduled for this later date in 2021 due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. We hope you can join us!
After 2021, NABH will host its subsequent Annual Meetings in June. Please save the date for these future NABH Annual Meetings:
We look forward to seeing you again in Washington!
Fact of the Week
A new
study found that health literacy (HL) “strongly correlated” with two-week and total readmissions among adult patients with bipolar disorder and supported the feasibility of assessing HL further in this patient population. The findings could also be useful for patient education, discharge planning, and policymaking.
For questions or comments about this CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond