CEO Update 207
SAMHSA Announces Behavioral Health Workforce Career Navigator
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration this week launched the
Behavioral Health Workforce Career Navigator to help current and aspiring behavioral health professionals identify state requirements for a range of behavioral health careers.
“We need a behavioral health workforce that can meet our country’s needs. That includes helping current and aspiring behavioral health workers pursue their careers and thrive in their work,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in an announcement. “The new Behavioral Health Workforce Career Navigator is an important tool towards improving the process of finding and comparing education, training, and licensure and certification requirements across the country. President Biden and Vice President Harris’ Unity Agenda continues to take on the biggest challenges facing Americans, including addressing our nation’s behavioral health needs.”
HHS will host a webinar about the new resource today, Friday, Nov. 15 at 3 p.m. ET. Click here to register.
If you haven’t yet, please be sure to check out the NABH Education and Research Foundation’s Workforce Startup Guide and share it with members of your human resources and operations teams.
Trump Chooses RFK, Jr. to Lead HHS While Senate GOP Leadership Takes Shape
President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday named environmental lawyer and activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, as the nation’s next HHS secretary.
Kennedy, a widely known vaccine skeptic, will require Senate confirmation to lead the department that oversees agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health.
“The safety and health of all Americans is the most important role of any administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming health crisis in this country,” Trump wrote Thursday in a post on the social media platform X.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) was elected by his peers to serve as majority leader to lead the Republican Caucus and control the Senate’s legislative agenda. Thune succeeds Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after McConnell decided to step down from the position while remaining in the Senate until the end of his term. Thune was elected to the Senate in 2005, ousting then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). A leader in the Senate Finance Committee, Thune has been a strong proponent for repealing the IMD exclusion.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-La.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) are positioned to chair the Senate HELP and Finance Committees, respectively, following the Republican victory on Nov. 5 that flipped Senate control to the GOP from Democrats. Cassidy is a policy-focused gastroenterologist. As ranking member of the Senate HELP Committee, Cassidy focused on pharmacy benefit manager reform and on site-neutral payment policy, among other issues. He has been a proponent of increasing access to behavioral healthcare services and voted in favor of S. 644, the Modernizing Opioid Treatment Access Act (MOTAA) in committee last December. Cassidy has heard the concerns over MOTAA from NABH and NABH member companies and allied groups and has appeared interested in working towards a mutually agreeable outcome. It is unknown currently to what extent he will prioritize the issue.
Both chairmen are expected to advocate for limited government and market-driven strategies to cut healthcare costs and work closely with President-elect Trump to implement his administration’s priorities, which could include allowing enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies to expire and promoting policies that chip away at the ACA and Medicaid. The chairmen will also have to advance a slew of Trump administration health nominees.
With the GOP gaining control of both chambers of Congress, lawmakers may use Reconciliation – a complex process allowing bill passage with a simple majority vote — to push through priority legislation.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is likely to remain as the HELP Committee’s ranking member. The incoming majority party will have two seats to fill, while the incoming minority party will have one vacancy.
With Crapo’s ascension, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) will become the Senate Finance Committee’s ranking member. Democrats will have six seats to fill due to the retirement of Sens. Stabenow (D-Mich.), Carper (D-Del.), and Cardin (D-Md.) and the defeats of Sens. Brown (D-Ohio), and Casey (D-Pa.) and resignation of Menendez (D-N.J.)
The House of Representatives will choose its committee chairmen and ranking members in December.
Future of the Kids Online Safety Act is Uncertain as 118th Congress Wraps Up
The outlook for the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is uncertain despite the Senate approving the legislation in a 91-3 vote this past July.
Introduced shortly after Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, M.D. released his advisory on social media and youth mental health, the bill aims to protect children from the harm social media causes to youth mental, physical, and emotional health by requiring social media companies to protect children’s privacy, prevent targeted advertising, and block manipulative algorithms to users 17 and younger.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the bill on Sept. 18 and the measure is seen as a priority for outgoing House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.); however, leaders including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) find the “platform duty-of-care” requirements and potential for censorship problematic.
Amended to mitigate the concerns about the duty-of-care language and the provision that would require tech companies to remove features that encourage compulsive use, the bill advanced through the committee process and has just a few weeks to become law before the 118th Congress ends.
Some youth and parent advocacy groups are concerned that the House version lacks the strength of the Senate version. Referring to the House version of the bill, Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair of the youth-led coalition Design It For Us, said “…In essence (it) removed the ability to target some of the design features that have preyed on my generation, preyed on young people,” according to Roll Call. Some parent advocacy groups said they hope Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and other Senate leaders will encourage House counterparts to pass the legislation.
If the bill does not pass during this Congress, it will need to be introduced in the 119th Congress.
Please Visit Our New Website!
NABH’s website is live! NABH has designed our updated site to help members, policymakers, journalists, patient advocates, and the general public learn about our association and the resources we provide in a way that is easier to navigate so you find what you’re looking for quickly and efficiently.
We have also updated our member password, which is required for member-only resources, such as our letters to congressional offices and regulatory agencies, as well as previous editions of CEO Update (all of which can be found by clicking on the “News” tab. NABH members should refer to the NABH Alert they received on Thursday, Oct. 31 for the new member password.
Please e-mail nabh@nabh.org with any questions or feedback you may have about the new site.
ICYMI: NABH’s Webinar on Using Publicly Available Data in Health Plan Negotiations
NABH on Thursday hosted a webinar about using hospital data effectively in your negotiations with health plans.
The webinar featured Erica K. Fox, M.B.A., vice president of business development and managed care contracting at Perimeter Healthcare.
Please click here for the webinar’s recording and here for the presentation slides.
Reminder: Manatt to Host Webinar About State Medicaid Innovations to Address America’s Behavioral Health Crisis
Research firm Manatt will host a webinar with state leaders to address topics such as 1115 demonstrations, strategies to combine Medicaid with other sources of funding, and what policies states are implementing to address the nation’s behavioral health crisis.
The hourlong webinar will start at 3 p.m. ET on Thursday, Nov. 21. Click here to register.
Please Submit Data to NABH’s Denial-of-Care Portal
We urge all NABH members to join those already submitting data to our Denial-of-Care Portal.
We are beginning to use aggregated portal data to illustrate and compare prior authorization practices for commercial, Medicare Advantage, and Medicaid managed care denials.
Policymakers have expressed particular interest in our aggregate estimate on days of uncompensated charity care, as well as the length of delayed health plan responses to prior-authorization requests.
To support this advocacy push, we strongly encourage all NABH members to submit data to the portal. Please contact NABH Associate Manager for Congressional Affair Emily Wilkins with questions about the data metrics that we are collecting and/or the data-submission process.
Fact of the Week
Rates of hospitalizations and ED visits related to mental health exceeded expected rates in only the second year after the pandemic onset (6% and 5%, respectively), whereas those related to self-harm persistently increased above expected rates after the pandemic onset (28% and 43% in the third year, respectively), according to a recent study in JAMA Network Open.
For questions or comments about this CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond