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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