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Arkansas mental health-care data system praised Wednesday, Mar 19, 2008 By Aaron Sadler Stephens Washington Bureau WASHINGTON - A project created out of necessity by Arkansas mental health-care providers who sought state funding for services drew praise from a national organization Tuesday. The state's innovative approach to collecting data on mental health services was called a "model to the rest of the country" by Linda Rosenberg, president of the National Council for Community Behavioral Health Care. Providers began the effort in large part to explain the benefits and necessity of their services to state legislators, said Kenny Whitlock, executive director of the Mental Health Council of Arkansas. Doctors and other providers gathered data on patient visits, medications they prescribed, types of illnesses and demographic information. "We needed to justify our work to those who provided funding to us," Whitlock said. "I got angry and practically refused to go to our Legislature until we had that information." Whitlock and John Althoff, deputy director of the state Division of Behavioral Health Services, participated in a briefing for congressional staffers on Capitol Hill. They were joined by mental health-care providers from Colorado, also lauded by Rosenberg for similar work in collecting information. She said other states can look at Arkansas and Colorado to learn how to use information to evaluate and improve their services. Whitlock said the information in Arkansas shows just how critical government assistance is to mental health-care funding. In 2007, the state's community mental health-care centers spent $173 million and had just $174 million in revenue. A federal block grant of about $6 million kept the industry from losing money, he said. In addition, Medicaid funded about 70 percent of mental health-care services in the state last year. Whitlock works on behalf of 15 community mental health-care centers in the state. The centers implemented the data collection system based on the business axiom that "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it," he said. In Colorado, the state's first lady uses the data collected from centers across the state to push her agenda for better mental health care, said George DelGrosso, director of the Colorado Behavioral Health Care Council. "We just really needed to let people know about our issues," DelGrosso said. "Now we're able to tell people what they're getting for what they're paying for." |
