New York judges have saved New Yorkers $41 Million by testing the Rockefeller drug law reform statutes.
In a recent paper “Drug Law Resentencing: Saving Tax Dollars with Minimal Community Risk”, the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Division in New York City says that drug law sentences have been proven too long, and that shorter re-sentencing is effective and less expensive.
Lesser sentences for lesser offenders is apparently working by saving millions of dollars and returning citizens to productive lives after the wake up call in jail. Meanwhile, major offenders who are determined by the courts to continue to give New Yorkers trouble remain behind bars a long time.
Naturally, addiction treatment providers are charged with a number of these lesser offenders, which just may lead to recovery….good news for all, and as an added “plus” I see a growing revenue stream.
Sounds good to me, what do you think? Is this version too good to be true?
Read more →The law firm of Moritt, Hock, Hamroff & Horowitz, LLP just won a landmark case for people in early recovery in Suffolk County, NY.
Judge Joseph F. Bianco of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York decided for the benefit of Oxford House, annulling Suffolk County’s local law regulating substance abuse houses on the basis that the law was facially discriminatory and was preempted by the Federal Fair Housing Act. The decision was a huge victory because upholding that law would deprive people disabled by alcohol and substance abuse problems of their ability to maintain recovery housing.
I’m from Oregon, and as far as I know, they don’t have sober houses there. Insomuch as recovering alcoholics and addicts are extremely vulnerable to that first drink or drug in their early sobriety, and it’s the first drink or drug that sets the monster loose, sober houses may be a good environment for a group of recovering folks to try to stay clean.
That being said, alcoholics do relapse, early recovery is a struggle to change the mind. The outcome of this case is a baby step in attempts to make laws more reasonable with regard to addiction and disease, from which nobody’s immune. Better to support recovery than not.
Sober Houses are a controversial subject, and your thoughts count.
Read more →The emergence of computer games as treatment appears to be sensible and effective according to experts like Henry W Mahncke, VP of Research & Outcomes at Posit Science.
I was at Starbucks yesterday, and a woman was there with her grade school-age son. In the Long Island way, she was talking with the boy, loud enough for all to hear, about his upcoming use of a computer game as treatment for his ADHD. As a former aficionado of Duke Nuk’em and Doom, I’ll vouch for the need to pay attention if you’re going to play. It caught my interest.
In a recent presentation I received from Open Minds, a consulting group, Dr Mahncke shared the statistical proof that his game-treatment works with schizophrenics. The more they play, the more it pays off.
So since computer game therapy, or rather “applied brain plasticity”, appears to increase in effectiveness with more hours of play, how will that be charged? Should it be charged? We can bet the insurance companies, funding sources like Medicaid, will resist paying for this.
Read more →Apparently, substance abuse treatment has an advocate in President Obama. His recently released budget request contains modest increases for a number of program budgets. Programs that disappeared have been combined with others to benefit “Successful, Safe and Healthy Students” and included in the proposed budget.
It’s only the first step of the budget process, so to assure the gains aren’t turned into losses you may want to get active.
Here are the budget figures I received.
Please let me know if my source is faulty.
Read more →One of the changes brought on by the NYS-OMH clinic restructuring is the realization that two or three services will need to be rendered for each patient visit in order to survive financially.
This presents interesting scheduling complications for organizations considering the nature of services to perform for the patient. A number of issues come into play. • Which combinations of services will deliver the highest monetary return? • Which services deliver the best outcomes? • Is the diagnosis appropriate, addressing the above questions?
I’m sure there are more, so feed me the complications I’m missing.
I ran across a presentation from Centerstone Research Institute on this subject, and to make a long story short, their study considered outcomes from specific services like Case Management, Group & Individual Therapy and Medications. A number of assessments were employed in the study, and outcomes from specific services and service combinations offered.
It looked like 70% of the outcomes of their cases were indeed predictable based on these service combinations…better outcomes = treatment success = good marketing, and can mean funding opportunities. More than that, better outcomes means the humans doing the work are not spinning their wheels delivering treatment, and efficiency of the provider organization is increased, which means everybody gets raises…or at least cutbacks are minimized.
In the end, the study depends on data…and each agency will need to provide its own data.
More to come on this subject.
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