FCC Chairman Proposes ‘988’ for National Suicide Prevention Hotline
Federal Communications Commission Chairman (FCC) Ajit Pai this week proposed rulemaking to establish 988 as a new, nationwide, three-digit phone number for a suicide prevention and mental health hotline.
“The suicide rate in the United States is at its highest level since World War II and designating 988 as the suicide prevention and mental health hotline would be a major boost for our nation’s suicide prevention efforts,” Pai said at an event with federal agency partners on Nov. 19. “When it comes to saving lives, time is of the essence, and we believe that 988 can be activated more quickly than other possible three-digit codes,” he said, adding that 988 also “has an echo of the 911 number” that is universally recognized as an emergency number.
In early June, NABH sent a
letter to the FCC asking the agency to immediately repurpose a nationwide, three-digit phone number for suicide prevention.
The Commission will vote on Pai’s proposal at its public meeting on Thursday, Dec. 12.
National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention Releases ‘Best Practices in Care Transitions’
The National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention has released
Best Practices in Care Transitions for Individuals with Suicide Risk: Inpatient Care to Outpatient Care, a 25-page report intended to help health systems and providers close gaps in care, improve patient experience and outcomes, and prevent suicide deaths.
Research shows that in the month after patients leave inpatient psychiatric care, their suicide death rate is 300 times higher in the first week and 200 times higher in the first month than in the general population, but nearly a third of these patients do not make it to outpatient care in this timeframe.
The report aims to advance two goals of the Action Alliance’s
National Strategy for Suicide Prevention: promote suicide prevention as a core component of healthcare, and promote and implement effective clinical and professional practices for assessing and treating those identified as being at risk for suicidal behaviors.
Milliman Disparities Report Highlights Need for NABH’s Access to Care Initiative
A report this week from Milliman, Inc. about disparities between physical and behavioral healthcare for both in-network access and provider reimbursement rates underscores NABH’s position that unnecessary barriers continue to deny access to behavioral healthcare for patients who need it.
The Bowman Family Foundation commissioned Milliman to produce
Addiction and Mental Health vs. Physical Health: Widening disparities in network use and provider reimbursement, a 140-page report that shows the gap in disparities for employees and their families seeking mental health and addiction treatment versus treatment for physical health conditions widened in 2016 and 2017.
According to the report, inpatient out-of-network use for behavioral health was over five times more likely than for medical/surgical services, worsening from 2.8 times more likely in 2013 to 5.2 times more likely in 2017, reflecting an 85% increase in disparities over five years. Meanwhile, office visit disparities were already five times higher in 2013 and worsened to 5.4 times in 2017, the report said.
In news releases from both Milliman and NABH, Mark Covall said the report’s findings emphasize what NABH members have said for years: unfair managed care practices too often create barriers for patients to access the care they need. Earlier this year, NABH launched its
Access to Care initiative to inform policymakers, the media, patient advocates, and the general public about two major challenges—unjust managed care practices and countless regulations—that prevent behavioral healthcare providers from providing a full range of services to patients.
CMS Announces Reorganization to Improve Regional Office Functions and Structure
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) this week announced a host of changes to its regional office structure as part of the agency’s earlier-announced
Modernizing CMS Strategic Initiative.
Among the changes is a plan to bring together staff, regardless of their location, who work on quality improvement and who survey facility quality and safety as a way to ensure consistency. Another program change will combine the regionally based Medicare operations work, the local oversight of the federally facilitated exchange plans, and external affairs into a single office that reports directly to the Office of the Administrator by creating the Office of Program Operations and Local Engagement, or OPLE.
CMS also said it will position the Medicaid program to better serve stakeholders by creating centers of excellence.
The announcement will be published in the
Federal Register on Monday, Nov. 25.
SAMHSA to Host Webinar on National Agenda for Behavioral Health in Youth Next Week
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) will host a webinar titled
Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health in Children and Youth: A National Agenda next Tuesday, Nov. 26 at 6 p.m. ET.
The webinar will provide an overview of the newly released National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s consensus report on this topic and will feature contributors to the report. They will recommend how to leverage the research to create a national agenda where children and youth thrive. The previous report on this topic was released 10 years ago.
Click
here to learn more about the webinar and
here to register.
SAMHSA Applications for Community Services Program Grant Due Dec. 23
SAMHSA is accepting applications for its Recovery Community Services Program to provide peer recovery support services through recovery community organizations to individuals with substance use disorders or co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders.
The agency said it plans to issue six grants of up to $300,000 per year for up to five years. Applications are due by Monday, Dec. 23. Click
here to learn more and to register.
Register Today for the 2020 NABH Annual Meeting!
Please visit NABH’s Annual Meeting
homepage today to view the Schedule At-a-Glance, learn about our
speakers, and to
register for the meeting.
Also please be sure to make your hotel
reservation at the Mandarin Oriental Washington, DC from March 16-18, 2020. We look forward to seeing you next March!
Fact of the Week
In 2017, a child’s out-of-network office visit for behavioral healthcare was 10.1 times more likely than for an out-of-network primary care office visit, which was more than twice the
disparity seen for adults.
Happy Thanksgiving from NABH!
NABH’s office will be closed next Thursday, Nov. 28 and Friday, Nov. 29 for Thanksgiving.
CEO Update will resume on Friday, Dec. 6. The NABH staff wishes its members and their families a very happy Thanksgiving!
For questions or comments about this CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond.