Please Meet with NABH’s Exhibitors and Sponsors at the 2023 Annual Meeting Next Month!
NABH appreciates the generous support of our exhibitors and sponsors, whose valuable products and services help NABH members deliver quality behavioral healthcare every day to those who need it!
Please make time to visit our exhibitors and sponsors at the Annual Meeting from June 12-14 at the Salamander Washington, DC. Before then, you can view a complete
list of our exhibitors and sponsors on our Annual Meeting homepage.
Also, please be sure to
register for the Annual Meeting and
reserve your hotel room today if you haven’t done so yet. We look forward to seeing you in Washington!
U.S. Labor Department Projects Five Mental Health Jobs Will Grow ‘Much Faster’ than Average from 2021-2031
The U.S. Labor Department’s (DOL) Bureau of Labor Statistics projects these five mental health-related careers will grow “much faster” than average between 2021-2031: mental health and substance abuse social workers; substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors; community health workers; healthcare social workers; and marriage and family therapists.
“Together, they employed about 761,000 workers in 2021 —and they are expected to have more than 91,000 openings on average each year through 2031,” DOL reported in its blog. “The education typically required to enter these occupations ranges from a high school diploma to a master’s degree, and they all pay around or more than the $46,310 median for all occupations in 2022.”
Click
here to learn more about growth projection for each position.
CMS Releases Guide for Medicaid School-based Services
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) this week released a guide for Medicaid school-based services to make it easier for schools to deliver and receive payment for healthcare services to millions of eligible students.
CMS worked with the U.S. Department of Education to produce the
Comprehensive Guide to Medicaid Services and Administrative Claiming, which is a result of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
“With this guide, we are helping states and schools bring health care to kids where they are, rather than the other way around,” CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in a statement. “Children spend most of their waking hours in school. We also know that children have suffered serious declines in access to mental and behavioral healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re making it easier for states and schools to maximize Medicaid coverage to grow connections to care.”
Medicaid and CHIP cover more than half of all U.S. children, or more than 41 million children, according to CMS. The guide is intended to help states and schools leverage Medicaid and CHIP, and it maps out how they can build a bridge between education and healthcare, including mental healthcare, to support children enrolled in these programs and help them thrive.
House and Senate Committees Press Insurers for Information on Claims
Two congressional oversight committees this week pressed the nation’s insurers for information regarding denial of claims in one instance and denial of care in Medicare Advantage in the second.
Republicans from the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a
letter to Cigna President and CEO David Cordani asking for clarification after online news source ProPublica released an investigative report that suggested the insurance company’s physicians reject claims without reading them.
Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hosted a hearing about delays and denials of care in Medicare Advantage. That hearing follows an April 2022
report from the HHS Office of Inspector General that found Medicare Advantage insurers have denied some coverage or payment for services that would have been covered under traditional Medicare.
Federally Supported Study Finds More than Half of Physicians Ranked Stigma as Highest Barrier to Treating Patients for OUD
A University of Vermont study of more than 450 clinicians and counselors in rural New England found that more than half (55%) ranked stigma as the highest barrier to treating patients for opioid use disorder (OUD) among other factors that included time and staffing, medication diversion, and organizational/clinic barriers.
Meanwhile, 60% of physicians and 51% of counselors surveyed disagreed that medications for OUD “replace addiction to one kind of drug with another.” However, among clinicians with the ability to prescribe, there was considerable difference in this belief, depending on whether they were currently treating with medications for OUD, or MOUD.
“More than 80% of those currently treating with MOUD believed it is not an addiction replacement; among those not currently treating with OUD, fewer than half felt that way,” the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) announced. FORHP is part of HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration and supports the Center on Rural Addiction at the University of Vermont, which conducted the study.
Reminder: Please Submit Data to Enhance NABH’s Managed-Care Advocacy Efforts
Thank you to all members who have submitted data to NABH’s denial-of-care portal!
We are still seeking data from additional members to support advocacy on health plan denials and prior-authorization timeliness. If you are a new participant, please e-mail NABH Administrative Coordinator
Emily Wilkins for support.
Fact of the Week
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
reports that more Black Americans died from fentanyl overdoses than from any other drug in 2021 and at far higher rates than whites or Hispanics.
For questions or comments about this CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond.
