2022 NABH Annual Meeting Registration is Open!
NABH is pleased to announce that registration opened this week for the 2022 NABH Annual Meeting:
Shaping the Future of Behavioral Healthcare.
Please join us from Monday, June 13 – Wednesday, June 15 at the Mandarin Oriental Washington, DC, and visit our Annual Meeting
webpage to register for the meeting and reserve your hotel room.
We look forward to seeing you in Washington!
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD Testifies to Senate Panel About Youth Mental Health
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD offered four recommendations to address the nation’s growing youth mental health crisis when he
testified before the influential Senate Finance Committee this week.
Speaking not only as the nation’s doctor, but also as someone who experienced bullying as a child, and as a parent, Murthy said there are number of longstanding, preventable factors that are driving feelings of loneliness and hopelessness among American youth.
“The recent ubiquity of technology platforms, especially social media platforms, has had harmful effects on many children,” Murthy said. “Though undoubtedly they serve as a benefit to the lives of many in important ways, these platforms have also exacerbated feelings of loneliness, futility, and low self-esteem for some youth,” he continued.
Murthy offered four recommendations to address the myriad youth mental health challenges in the United States: first, ensure that every child has access to high-quality, affordable, and culturally competent mental health care; next, focus on prevention, by investing in school and community-based programs that gave been shown to improve the mental health and emotional well-being of children at low cost and high benefit; third, better understand the impact that technology and social media have on mental health; and, finally, overcome stigma. For that last recommendation, Murthy said this area concerns both individual and community engagement, and it requires understanding the role we each have to play in overcoming stigma.
CDC, FDA Release Draft Guidance for Opioid Prescribing
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday released its anticipated draft
guidance on opioid prescribing for acute pain, subacute pain, and chronic pain in adults.
The guidance includes recommendations on clinician-patient communication, improved safety and effectiveness, and reduction in risks of developing an opioid use disorder (OUD), overdose, and death. It also recommends periodic review of the state prescription drug monitoring program data, consideration for toxicology testing, caution when co-prescribing benzodiazepines, and arrangement of medication treatment for patients with OUD.
This clinical practice guideline provides recommendations and does not require mandatory compliance. Public comments on the recommendations are due April 11.
Also this week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released
guidance to develop non-addictive alternatives to opioids for acute pain, in response to the statutory requirements of section 3001(b) of the
Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities (SUPPORT)
Act. The FDA said it expects to address chronic pain in future guidance.
Comments on the FDA guidance are also due April 11.
Register for National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week: March 21-27, 2022
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) invites organizations to participate in National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week (NDAFW), a national health observance meant to empower teens and young adults about making informed decisions about drugs, alcohol, and addiction.
NIDA has developed five
steps to hosting a NDAFW event and created lesson
plans and other materials for educators, counselors, and prevention specialists.
Please click
here to learn how to register your organization’s event online.
Reminder: NABH Denial-of-Care Portal is Open to Members
NABH’s Denial-of-Care Portal is available for members to provide information about their experiences with managed care organizations that impose barriers to care through insurance-claim denials.
NABH’s Managed Care Committee worked for more than a year to develop the Denial-of-Care Portal as a way to collect specific data on insurers who deny care—often without regard for parity or the effects on patients.
This NABH member-only, survey-like tool allows users to add the name of a managed care organization, type of plan, level of care, type of care (mental health or substance use disorder), duration of approved treatment, duration of unapproved treatment, criteria used to deny a claim, and more.
The portal allows members to submit individual examples of claim denials or upload multiple entries via Excel. It also includes sections on appeals and physician participation. In time, the tool could be a valuable resource for the NABH team’s advocacy efforts.
Please e-mail
Emily Wilkins, NABH’s administrative coordinator, if you have questions about the portal.
Fact of the Week
Beyond nursing home care, members of racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to reside in areas that suffer from physician shortages, including shortages of primary care doctors, surgeons, and mental health providers, which is also a product of structural racism. Learn more in the February 2022 edition of
Health Affairs, a theme issue devoted to system racism and its effects on health.
For questions or comments about this CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond.