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Primary Care Integration: Alternative Workforce Strategies for Community-Based Behavioral Health Service Organizations in the Era of Physician Shortages
It has been many years since the surgeon general report declared that vastly poor health outcomes for persons suffering from behavioral health disorders was a public health crisis. Lives filled with long term disability and early mortality caused, in part, by service fragmentation within the U.S....
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New Management Services Organization Established to Support NY Community Behavioral Health Providers
Coordinated Behavioral Care (CBC) and Coordinated Behavioral Health Services (CBHS) announced today their joint formation of a Management Services Organization (MSO), Innovative Management Solutions NY (IMSNY) to support New York State’s Behavioral Health provider community. IMS’s initial...
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Mental Health Parity and Its Impact on the Behavioral Health Workforce
In 2006, New York enacted a parity mandate in the form of Timothy’s Law, which requires group health plans to provide 30 inpatient days and 20 outpatient days for most mental health diagnoses and requires large plans to provide full coverage for certain biologically based illnesses. Several years...
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New Mental Health Parity Laws in New York State
About one in five New Yorkers require behavioral health services, but many do not receive treatment because of a lack of access to insurance coverage. More than 10 years ago, the federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act required large group health plans that provide mental health...
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Rural Workforce Development: Critical Challenges
The critical challenges that are associated with rural workforce development remain a significant issue in America. We have an obligation to explore the best ways of caring for the underserved rural population. Currently we have a health professions crisis unfolding. The federal government projects...
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The Behavioral Health Workforce Crisis: Past, Present, and Future
First on the list of topics for this issue of Behavioral Health News was “The Workforce Crisis Today.” That’s interesting because the workforce “crisis” is anything but new. For example, when I first entered this field during the height of deinstitutionalization in New York—the early...
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Staff Development at the Mental Health Association of Westchester
In recent editions of Behavioral Health News, we have written of sweeping transformations in services offered at The Mental Health Association of Westchester (MHA). These transformations require critical staff development - learning new skills and new processes of working. To manage these changes,...
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Millennials in the Workplace: Investing in a Generation
Millennials are now the largest age demographic in the country and the fastest growing cohort in the workforce. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, it is projected that by the end of next year millennials will make up 47 percent of the employees in the workplace, and five years later they...
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A Dedicated but Neglected Workforce: A Clarion Call for Change
The social service agencies on which vulnerable New Yorkers depend rely heavily on the state government for financial support inasmuch as they act as extensions of it in fulfilling many responsibilities that would otherwise be borne by the public sector. Nevertheless, the period following the Great...
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Behavioral Health Care: How Far We’ve Come in 15 Years
Fifteen years goes by in the blink of an eye. This summer I’m stepping down after 15 years as president and CEO of the National Council for Behavioral Health, which is celebrating it’s 50th anniversary. This is a good time to take stock of where we have been as a field and where we are...
