Skip to main content

You’re not alone. Call 988 to connect to the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Join Us    |    Contact

CEO Update | 60

Representatives Porter, Bilirakis, and Norcross Introduce Mental Health Parity Compliance Act Reps. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), and Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) this week introduced the Mental Health Parity Compliance Act, the House version of the bill that Sens. Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-La.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) introduced last week. The legislation is based on a best-practice approach that state legislatures in Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. have enacted and ensures that health insurance providers are following the 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. “As part of removing the stigma for treating mental illness, we must ensure that mental health needs are recognized as legitimate healthcare issues,” Bilirakis said in a news release. “One way to do that is to ensure parity between coverage for healthcare and mental healthcare services—which happens to be the law.” NABH, a Mental Health Liaison Group member, signed on to letters supporting both the House and Senate bills. CMS Issues Request for Information for its Patients Over Paperwork Initiative The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking new ideas from the public about how to continue the agency’s Patients over Paperwork initiative. Launched in 2017, Patients over Paperwork has worked to streamline regulations in healthcare that often take clinicians away from their primary purpose of caring for patients. The new RFI provides an opportunity for the public to share ideas that were not suggested during the first RFI period two years ago. Specifically, CMS is looking for ways to improve reporting and documentation requirements; coding for Medicare and Medicaid payments; prior authorization procedures; policies and requirements for rural providers, clinicians, and beneficiaries; policies and requirements for dually enrolled beneficiaries; beneficiary enrollment and eligibility determination; and CMS processes for issuing regulations and policies. In its comments to CMS, NABH will highlight The High Cost of Compliance, the association’s report that assessed the regulatory burden on the nation’s inpatient psychiatric facilities. Released in March, the report found that three specific regulatory areas impose $1.7 billion in compliance costs each year nationwide, which represent 4.8 percent of an average facility’s annual revenue for all inpatient psychiatric services from all sources. NABH will continue to work with CMS to address the report’s key findings and recommendations. Comments are due by Monday, August 12. HHS’ Office of Adolescent Health Releases Updated Data on Nation’s Teens New data from HHS’ Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) show 31 percent of U.S. high school students in 2017 reported they felt sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row in the past year. The findings are part of OAH’s updated national and state data sheets, which OAH released June 10 to provide estimates on a range of measures related to adolescent health and behavior. The analysis draws on large, nationally representative surveys, and measures include physical activity and nutrition, mentorship, family meals, cigarette and e-cigarette use, driving under the influence, depression systems, bullying, dating violence, and more. ASPE and RTI Recruiting Organizations to Participate in Telehealth Case Studies HHS’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) and RTI International are recruiting organizations to participate in case studies as part of their new assessment of telehealth to treat mental and substance use disorders in youth and adolescent patients. According to ASPE, the goal of the project is to better understand how telehealth is used for these populations; what challenges providers and patients face; and what innovations are happening. This project will especially focus on understanding what policies influence the use of telehealth, including the role of Medicaid in promoting access to telehealth programs. RTI is recruiting organizations to participate in case studies, which will consist of RTI staff conducting in-person discussions with individuals involved in providing, coordinating, and supporting telehealth services (such as administrators, clinicians, and peer support specialists), and a walk-through of the site’s general telehealth model and the technology that is used for it. Discussions during the site visits will focus on challenges the organization may have encountered, strategies employed to overcome these challenges, and overall lessons learned in implementing telehealth to support the delivery of behavioral healthcare. Please e-mail Sarah Wattenberg, NABH’s director of quality and addiction services, if you would like your organization to participate. SAMHSA Accepting Applications for Mental and Substance Use Disorder Practitioner Data Grant The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is accepting applications for its fiscal year 2019 Mental and Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Practitioner Data grant, which is intended to provide comprehensive data and analysis on individuals who address these conditions. According to the funding notice, the program’s goal is to provide valid data on existing practitioners and usable information to SAMHSA that the agency can use to make policy and planning decisions. SAMHSA said total available funding is $1 million, and applications are due by Monday, Aug. 12. Click here to learn more and apply. CDC Study Examines Connection Between Prescription Opioid Misuse and Binge Drinking More than half of the 4.2 million people who misused prescription opioids during 2012-2014 were binge drinkers, and binge drinkers had nearly twice the odds of misusing prescription opioids, compared with non-drinkers, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Binge drinking is consuming four or more drinks for women and consuming five or more drinks for men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which conducted the study. The CDC’s analysis shows that people who binge drank were nearly twice as likely to misuse prescription opioids as non-drinkers, even after accounting for other factors that could affect the relationship between prescription opioid misuse and binge drinking, such as age and sex. For this report, CDC researchers analyzed data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health for 2012, 2013, and 2014 on self-reported binge drinking and prescription opioid misuse during the past 30 days. Scientists found that while young people who binge drank and had higher rates of prescription opioid misuse, two in three people who binge drank and misused prescription opioids were age 26 years and older. Study Finds Association Between Medical Cannabis Laws and Opioid Overdose Mortality Has Reversed Over Time Claims that enacting medical cannabis laws will reduce opioid overdose death should be met with skepticism, researchers noted in a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Published earlier this week, the study explains that medical cannabis has been touted as a solution to the nation’s opioid overdose crisis since an earlier study found that from 1999 to 2010 states with medical cannabis laws experienced slower increases in opioid analgesic overdose mortality. This recent study used the same methods to extend that analysis through 2017 and concluded that not only did the findings from the original analysis not hold over the longer period, but the association between state medical cannabis laws and opioid overdose mortality reversed direction from -21 percent to +23 percent and remained positive after accounting for recreational cannabis laws. “A more plausible interpretation is that this association is spurious,” the researchers noted. “Moreover, if such relationships do exist, they cannot be rigorously discerned with aggregate data,” they added. “Research into therapeutic potential of cannabis should continue, but the claim that enacting medical cannabis laws will reduce opioid overdose death should be met with skepticism.” NABH Submits Comment Letters to CMS and FCC Extending an Electronic Health Record (EHR) incentive to behavioral healthcare providers and repurposing a national “N11” number for a suicide hotline were the topics of two comment letters that NABH sent recently to CMS and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In a letter to CMS, NABH said only a small portion of behavioral healthcare providers are using EHRs. According to data from CMS’ IPFQR program, about 30 to 40 percent of psychiatric hospitals use EHRs, a level that has remained constant. The fiscal year 2019 (FY19) Inpatient Psychiatric Facility Prospective Payment System (IPF PPS) rule emphasizes this, noting: “performance on this measure [use of and electronic health record] has remained relatively static for the past two program years.” NABH urged CMS to establish a program—perhaps within the Innovation Center— that would extend EHR incentives to the behavioral healthcare providers who were excluded from the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. Extending this funding to behavioral healthcare providers will do far more to improve care for Medicare beneficiaries than any change to conditions of participation, NABH President and CEO Mark Covall noted. The association also sent a letter this month to FCC Secretary Marlene Dortch asking the agency to establish a national number, or N11 number, for a national suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline system. “Based on the urgency of the suicide crisis and the nature of suicidal ideation, the potential positive outcomes outweigh any costs associated with changing an existing N11 number,” Mark Covall wrote. “This is why we strongly encourage the FCC to move forward immediately and repurpose an existing N11 number for a national suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline system.” Call for Presentations Now Open for Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit 2020 The Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit is now accepting submissions for its meeting in Nashville, Tenn. from April 13-16, 2020. The Summit will accept presentation proposals in two formats: breakout sessions lasting 75 minutes (including a question-and-answer period), and posters, which will be featured in the exhibit hall. All submissions are due by midnight ET on Friday, August 23. Click here for submission details. Learn about Recovery Centers of America in NABH’s Latest Member Profile! NABH member Recovery Centers of America has created a specialized program called Promoting Recovery through Intensive Support and Education, or PRISE, at its facility in Devon, Pa. to address the problem of multiple relapses for patients seeking addiction treatment. PRISE relies on a three-pronged, therapeutic, evidence-based approach to help patients who have relapsed. Click here to learn more. For questions or comments about CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond.