What are the major challenges facing mental health service delivery?
Overall, the greatest challenge facing the mental health system is to restructure and move away from traditional funding and programming to managed care. Instead of paying a set amount for an inpatient stay or clinic treatment, we need to assign dollars for what an individual gets based on his or her specific needs. I also want to focus more on working with localities. We need better partnerships with local governments. Localities should tell the State what their needs are instead of everything being directed from Albany. We need to focus on accountability and oversight. For example, do we have mechanisms in place that assess that our agency providers are providing best practices? We need more effective ways of monitoring treatment. We need to move toward outcome measurements. A major challenge is the implementation of the Special Needs Plan. The Special Needs Plan is our mental health managed care program. We currently have 6 Requests for Proposals out and will be awarding contracts i
