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community mental health centers.
Because Ozark Guidance receives
about $2.7 million per year in state and
federal funding, the organization is
required to treat people with mental illness
regardless of their ability to pay.
But that uncompensated care cost
the nonprofit about $4 million in 2012,
Petrizzo said. Ozark Guidance is primarily
an outpatient behavioral health
center, but it does offer some residential
treatment.
Last year, almost 5,200 of Ozark’s
11,000 patients were on Medicaid,
Petrizzo said.
About 1,700 more would be eligible
for Medicaid coverage under the proposed
Medicaid expansion to people
with incomes of up to 138 percent of the
federal poverty line.
“The main thing that would be helpful
to us … would be the Medicaid extension,
where states have the ability to
increase the income eligibility level,”
Petrizzo said.
“It would reduce our uncompensated
care burden, we figure, by 20-25 percent.
… There’s a certain limit to how much
you can do with uncompensated care. If
a person has Medicaid, it’s easier to provide
care because it’s a payment source.”
More Problems
Treating people who are chronically
mentally ill and don’t have insurance
comes with an array of problems, said
Tom Grunden, executive director of the
Little Rock Community Mental Health
Center.
For one, emergency room and inpatient
treatment are expensive, Grunden
said.
Further, such services pull people
out of their support systems of family
and friends and don’t build sustainable,
ongoing treatment outside of a facility,
he said.
“Mental illness is recurring,” but
patients come, receive intervention,
then disappear, even though preventive
care is cheaper,” Grunden said. “Thus,
Mental Health Checklist
MENTAL HEALTH
[providers] don’t know when symptoms
recur.”
Grunden, along with executive directors
of other Arkansas community mental
health centers, serves on the board of
the nonprofit Mental Health Council of
Arkansas.
The Mental Health Council of
Arkansas is pushing for a different model.
They adovcate one that would keep
clients more consistently out of inpatient
treatment and, with the help of case
managers, help them learn to manage
their own mental health care consistently
over time.
Then, “as people grow stable, the
Symptoms that someone needs to be evaluated for mental health treatment, as
explained by Lee Christenson, CEO of Springwoods Behavioral Health in Fayetteville:
w Depression is interfering with the person’s quality of life, relationships and work;
w A psychotic break is impairing someone’s good judgment in caring for himself;
w He is abusing alcohol or drugs; and/or
w He is suicidal or talking of harming others.
Expert Advice
... from the CEO Lee Christenson:
“We live in a stressful world. People have a lot of stresses and strains in
their life. I think the pivot point of when people really need care is when
depression persists over a period of time. There is help and there is hope
and people can recover.”
Find out more about hiring our graduates at
hire.uafs.edu or by calling 479.788.7017
Arkansas Business January 28, 2013 19
focus is on prevention, not acute treatment,”
Grunden said.
Money Means Options
Due to state and federal mental health
parity laws, people who are insured typically
don’t have trouble finding treatment,
providers said.
“I think the issue is: Do you have
insurance?” Grunden said. “If not, you
have a hill to climb.”
Petrizzo echoed that idea.
Community mental health providers
tend to struggle to find psychiatrists to
hire because there’s more money to be
made in private practice, Petrizzo said.
Not enough psychiatrists means longer
waits for outpatient treatment, he
said. “There’s a shortage there to be able
to serve those folks,” he said.
Medical schools aren’t producing
enough psychiatrists to meet demand,
Petrizzo said, and most psychiatrists
aren’t interested in working for community
health providers.
Therefore, the sector where there are
more doctors, and where mainly paying
clients are served, is private practice.
Private practitioners can limit the charity
care they offer.
So, what’s it like if you have money,
insurance or both?
“You’ve got lots of choices,” Petrizzo
said. “There’s all kinds of private practitioners.”
n
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