Practice Management Insight

September 2012

A report on events affecting Oklahoma providers

September 1 – 30

Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

CureSearch for Children’s Cancer

September 1 – 30

Leukemia & Lymphoma Awareness Month

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

September 1 – 30

National Atrial Fibrillation Awareness Month

American Foundation for Women’s Health

September 1 – 30

National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month

American College of Sports Medicine

September 1 – 30

Newborn Screening Awareness Month

Save Babies Through Screening Foundation, Inc.

September 3

Labor Day

September 12

Drug Utilization Review Board Meeting

OHCA

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September 13

OHCA Board Meeting

OHCA

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September 14

Ethical Dilemmas Training-Case Managers Only

Lawton

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September 14

Ethical Dilemmas Training-RSS Only

Lawton

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September 16 – 22

National Rehabilitation Awareness Celebration

National Rehabilitation Awareness Foundation

September 18

Get Ready Day

American Public Health Association

September 18

Perinatal Task Force Meeting

OU Health Sciences Center Campus/Schusterman Campus

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September 20

Medical Advisory Committee Meeting

OHCA

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September 20 – 21

Case Mgmt Training

OKC

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September 21

World Alzheimer’s Day

Alzheimer’s Disease International

September 28

ODMHSAS Board Meeting

OKC

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September 28 – October 2

National Conference on Addiction Disorders

Vendome Group

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September 29

World Heart Day

World Heart Federation

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month

“Promotes the societal benefits of treatment for substance use and mental disorders, celebrates people in recovery, lauds the contributions of treatment providers, and promotes the message that recovery in all its forms is possible. Recovery Month spreads the positive message that behavioral health is essential to overall health, that prevention works, treatment is effective and people can and do recover.” The 2011 Recovery Month observance aims to educate the public on the positive changes that national health care reform will have on access to needed recovery services for substance use and mental disorders.

SEPTEMBER is …

Proof Positive

Election 2012: Recovery Rooms and Party Platforms

The Coalition for Whole Health has undertaken key election tasks this year.

With the annual demarcation of the Labor Day Holiday, Election 2012 is now in full swing. As in 2008, the Coalition for Whole Health (CWH) again has been very active in seeking to focus attention on mental illness and substance use prevention, care, and recovery at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, and at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

CWH was formed in 2008 to promote recognition of the need to address mental illness and substance use conditions as part of the quadrennial national elections...

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"Turn to Help" initiative hopes to raise awareness of opioid dependence

“Could it be opioid dependence?”  That is the question Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals would like people to ask themselves.  With their “Turn to Help” initiative, the goal is to ”increase public awareness of opioid dependence, provide much needed resources to people living with this chronic medical condition and help people connect with appropriate support to treat their dependence,” according to Richard Simkin, U.S. President of Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals.

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Alcohol researchers still uneasy about plan to combine NIAAA, NIDA

Some doubt the two institutes will be joined at all.

The “merger” of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) is moving ahead slowly, secretly, but—in the views of most—inexorably to a conclusion, which will emerge as a draft after the election in November and in final proposed form in the president’s budget for fiscal year 2014 next February. One thing is clear, however: “Merger” is a misnomer.

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OIG report on PHPs: The tip of the iceberg

CMS now implementing higher level of scrutiny for mental health providers.

Mental health care providers billing Medicare or Medicaid take heed: the federal government is watching you. The most recent report issued last month by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG), which focused on partial hospitalization program (PHP) services billing Medicare, found that almost half of the community mental health centers (CMHCs) involved were engaging in questionable billing practices, and that 90 percent of the cases occurred in three states that don’t regulate CMHCs: Florida, Louisiana, and Texas.

While this report, “Questionable Billing by Community Mental Health Centers,” focused on PHPs, all CMHCs are under scrutiny under a new system of “program integrity” at HHS.

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The Continuing Struggle: Helping Individuals and Families in the Criminal Justice System

Too often, individuals with mental illness fall through the cracks of the mental care health system and end up in jail. Currently, about 16.9 percent of jail inmates and 24 percent of state prisoners live with serious mental illness. In addition, 70 percent of youth in juvenile justice centers lives with one or more psychiatric disorders, with at least 20 percent having a serious mental illness that interferes with everyday life.

This reality is outrageous and due, in large part, to the barriers that people with mental illness face in accessing the services they need…

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N.J. medication program targeting low-income addicts looks to expand

Many patients favor services delivered from mobile treatment site.

A pilot program in New Jersey is demonstrating that medication-assisted treatment can make a significant difference in the lives of low-income individuals chronically addicted to opiates, and project administrators look with optimism toward wider implementation of the initiative across the state…

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Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a relatively new treatment for Major Depression that is being investigated by a number of scientists across the world.  At the current time, the FDA has only officially cleared TMS for a single indication: treatment-resistant depression. TMS, as a generic procedure, has not been approved by the FDA. Rather, a specific device that performs TMS, the NeuroStar, was cleared by the FDA in Oct. 2008 for clinical use in treatment-resistant depression.

TMS is an outpatient intervention which could be an option for individuals diagnosed with major depression who have not-responded to trials of antidepressant medications at an adequate dose and duration…

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