Behavioral Health News
Improving billing and claims results
Pathways, a comprehensive care center in Ashland, Kentucky, had a collection rate from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of just 3.25% for the first six months of 2011. When agency leaders saw the result, they decided to do something about it.
Together with other behavioral health provider agencies in Kentucky, Pathways joined a NIATx collaborative, funded by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. Each collaborative member agency would aim to improve the fee-for-service billing processes it uses with insurance companies.
Led by mental health advocates, Tulsa targets end to chronic homelessness
In an effort spanning more than 20 years, concerned citizens and organizations in Tulsa, Oklahoma have combined careful planning, proactive leadership, and a generous element of public and private funding to build one of the nation’s leading housing and recovery programs. In doing so, Tulsans have struck powerful blows against the stigma associated with mental illness and disabilities, a stigma that can lead to discrimination in housing, services, and opportunities, according to Michael W.
Merger of Texas centers enhances continuum of services
The CEO of two newly combined addiction treatment organizations with a strong presence in Houston and Austin, Texas firmly believes that the type of business transaction he has seen to completion will be duplicated in many other locations.
Obama gun-violence plan: Millions more for mental health services
In announcing the Administration’s plan to reduce gun-related violence, President Obama said he would issue a series of 23 executive orders and ask legislators to approve additional initiatives totaling tens of millions more aimed at helping the nation “make access to mental health care as easy as access to a gun.” Among the key elements of the President’s announcement were:
CPT code changes: Using “add-on” CPT codes
When billing for psychotherapy and an Evaluation and Management (E/M) service, the CPT coding will no longer be based on the time of psychotherapy. Instead, providers should bill the E/M and a psychotherapy add-on code (See chart).
Project Transition appoints new chief executive officer
Project Transition, an organization focused on providing help to adults with psychiatric problems through apartment-based therapeutic communities, has recently made some changes to its administrative and programmatic components.
To that end, Project Transition has announced that Luke Crabtree, JD, MBA has been appointed the chief executive officer of Project Transition.
Crabtree has described his vision for Project Transition by the following four key principles:
A time to act for the Innocents
The Newtown Tragedy has generated an exceptionally important dialogue between the mental health and substance use care community and the Obama Administration. The field has had a unique opportunity to help identify broad-based solutions for the Vice-Presidential Taskforce created by President Obama. At a meeting earlier this week chaired by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of HHS and Attorney Eric Holder of the Justice Department, widespread agreement existed around the recommendations our community provided three weeks ago in a National Call to Action:
Community interdependence: the path to sustained recovery
The recovery movement has made wonderful progress over the past 15 years in getting people thinking about and starting the recovery journey. Our next important step is to create a pathway that enables each recovering person to sustain healing and well-being by learning, growing, and contributing to the larger community—a community where reciprocal relationships build an interdependent network of ongoing natural support.
Big CPT code changes for 2013
By Alison Knopf
When mental health providers bill insurance companies, they use codes — Current Procedural Terminology or CPT codes — to designate the therapeutic or treatment procedures that they have performed. A huge revamp of the CPT code set for 2013 means that, in many cases, providers will for the first time have to learn completely new codes.
Life, unrestrained
One doesn’t have to listen to Elyn Saks, JD, PhD long before realizing that she has one of the most interesting brains on the planet—shaped not only by an innate brilliance, but also by the schizophrenia that she has learned to live with most of her adult life.
