ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 24, 1997 TAG: 9701240054
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-10 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
Lean and mean managed health care can be a nightmare for people suffering from mental illness, a panel of experts said Thursday.
They said tight controls on access, treatment and costs by some health management organizations are creating systemwide problems for patients, physicians and hospitals.
Those comments and others came during a meeting of the Montgomery County Human Services Commission, held at the new county Health and Human Services building in Christiansburg, that focused on managed mental health care.
Skyrocketing health care system costs needed to be restrained, but the managed health system has overcompensated by unduly restricting health care, local health providers said.
The result, said Marie Moon-Painter of Carilion St. Alban's Hospital, is more patients asking, "Don't you folks care?"
Managed health and its system of balancing costs against care is a subject of general controversy, said Stephania Munson, Montgomery County's humans services director.
Yet mental health patients are particularly vulnerable to being overwhelmed - or frozen out - of benefits, she added.
It's more difficult for patients with mental illness to prove that they are truly sick. And mental patients are less likely to fight an increasingly impersonal system, Munson added.
Some system of organizing health care and managing costs was a necessity forced on employee health care providers by rapidly increasing expenses, said David Walker of Litton Poly-Scientific.
Yet health management organizations have become too zealous in controlling costs, said Amy Forsyth-Stephens, executive director of the Mental Health Association of the New River Valley.
Patients feel the arbitrary effects of the new system in several ways, she said. Access to care is delayed, benefits such as length of hospital stays are restricted, and decisions on patient treatment are made with a steady eye on bottom line costs.
Physicians can be intimidated by the large health care networks, said Dianne Jones-Freeman of Counseling Associates of Southwest Virginia, Inc.
Other health care providers said restrictions on treatment options imposed by managed care threaten to force them out of business.
The solution, panelists agreed, is to voice their concerns and force managed health care providers to loosen up.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 linesby CNB