New plan offers better psych treatment
Indiana’s human services chief told a state panel Tuesday that Hoosier Healthwise is delivering better psychiatric treatment to needy children since it switched to a managed care system in January.
Advocates for consumers and mental health providers, however, said it wasn’t clear from data presented to the Commission on Mental Health whether children and adolescents with depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses were better served now than under a traditional fee-for-service program that ended Dec. 31.
Secretary Mitch Roob of the Family and Social Services Administration presented the data, including statistics showing the three Hoosier Healthwise insurers had approved outpatient care for 89 percent or more of minors diagnosed with mental illnesses during the first eight months this year. That compared with about 40 percent under fee-for-service in 2006.
“I think we have made enormous strides in managing mental health care,” Roob said.
The commission last month had requested extensive data on how well Hoosier Healthwise was providing managed psychiatric care following complaints that insurers too often were rejecting requests for treatment.
Hoosier Healthwise provides medical and psychiatric care to more than 500,000 low-income Indiana children. That care is managed through three insurers: Indiana-based MDWise and Anthem and St. Louis-based Managed Health Services. Each of the three partners with managed behavioral health organizations to provide psychiatric care.
Jim Jones, the executive director of the Indiana Council of Community Mental Health Centers Inc., said the FSSA data did not measure the quality of care children were receiving. Asked if care was better now than a year ago, he said, “We don’t know those answers yet. … It’s a challenge, and it will be an ongoing one.”
Representatives of the insurers said they were taking steps to deliver better care to kids.
Michelle Brochu, vice president of operations at Comprehensive Care Corp., or CompCare, the managed behavioral health organization working with MDWise, said her company has added more staff and made other changes to better handle claims from doctors and other providers.
CompCare also has a full-time discharge planner working with parents to ensure children receive follow-up mental health care once hospital stays have ended.
“That patient still needs support and still needs services,” Brochu told the commission.
Commission members had few questions for FSSA officials and the insurers Tuesday after having grilled them extensively at a meeting last month. That “mystified” consumer advocate Joe Vanable of West Lafayette, the immediate past president of the Indiana chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.