Governor’s Mental Health Service Delivery Commission Releases First Progress Report

The Mental Health Service Delivery Commission established by Governor Sonny Perdue released its first progress report today, outlining specific recommendations to improve treatment, care and services for Georgia’s mentally ill.

The commission, created by executive order in August 2007 to take a comprehensive look at the delivery of mental health services to Georgians, is one of several steps taken by Governor Perdue to establish a new direction for Georgia’s mental health system. Other steps include the approval of increased funding for mental health services and meeting with key mental health stakeholders and advocates to develop a blueprint for improving the system.

According to the commission’s report, two essential elements in improving Georgia’s mental health system will be strengthening community-based services to prevent unnecessary hospitalization and incarceration, and improving treatment and care in state hospitals.

Specifically, the commission’s progress report includes several recommendations for improving Georgia’s entire mental health system. Highlights of the recommendations include:

· Creating a behavioral health collaborative or Cabinet that will help leverage resources and standardize policies across the State’s behavioral health services.
· Improving access to medications and improving the transition of consumers from one system to another to ensure better continuity of care.
· Expanding core community services such as short-term and mobile crisis stabilization, intensive case management, and detoxification.
· Completing a study of the economic effects of mental health parity in health insurance to determine benefits and costs to public and private healthcare systems in Georgia.
· Enhancing the quality of care at the State’s seven hospitals by increasing and standardizing the average cost per bed day.
· Developing a guaranteed benefit package for serving children and adolescents with uniform authorization procedures and standards, regardless of payer source.

These and other recommendations address the need for comprehensive quality improvements in how the state delivers mental health treatment and care and promotes the adoption of clinical best practices.

The commission’s progress report issues specific goals and measures to improve Georgia’s mental health system. The commission is planning meetings with state agency representatives from the Department of Juvenile Justice, Department of Education, Department of Labor, Department of Community Affairs and the Secretary of State’s Office to develop action steps for each recommendation in the report.

The commission is expected to issue a full report this December.
A copy of the 25-page progress report may be accessed at this web address: http://dhr.georgia.gov/DHR-MHDDAD/DHR-MHDDAD_File/Final%20-Commission%20Progress%20Report_1.doc