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The New York State Conference of Local Mental Hygiene Directors   
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OPWDD's Road to Reform and Redesign 

On April 9 from 11 am to 1 pm, OPWDD will host a statewide videoconference to explain agency changes in detail, and to hear your ideas on how we can make the most of latest opportunities to improve services for people with developmental disabilities. To register to attend, please email your People First Waiver liaison, whose address can be found
here.   

Workplace Wellness: Why it Matters


Workplace wellness is everybody's business. Many employees spend more than 1/3 of their day at work. That's at least one meal a day-- and the majority of their waking hours. Given all of the time we spend at work, employers and employees coming together to create a healthy work environment benefits everyone!



OMH has added additional dates and places to the OMH listening Tour.  Link below:

Dates  

 

 

Mental health officials troubled by NY gun-control law   

 

Opt-out pistol permit forms cost Monroe county $177K

 

Gun paperwork overwhelming clerks, sheriff's offices in Warren, Washington, Saratoga counties

 
Legislators in Connecticut Agree on Broad New Gun Laws  

  

Erie County Sees Rise in Homelessness in 2012

  

Hudson Valley Regional Council to address domestic violence  

OMH Reviews Dutchess' Successful MH Services Model 

 

Campaign aims to curb child sex trafficking in Monroe County 

     

Growing worry over ADHD   

diagnoses 

 

The Secret to Fixing School Discipline? Change the Behavior of Adults       

 

Tobacco cessation programs have shown a return on investment of as high as $50 for every $1 spent.

 

EMTs embrace overdose fix   

 

NYSDDPC Funding Announcement  

 

Treatment Resistance in Borderline Personality Disorder  

 

Free two-hour video on Understanding Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD): An Overview offered by NYS OPWDD on April 18. 2013

 

Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) refers to the wide range of physical, cognitive, and behavioral birth defects caused by maternal consumption of alcohol during pregnancy.  

 

Understand the effects of prenatal alcohol consumption on a developing fetus; learn intervention strategies to address primary/secondary disabilities caused by FASD; and  identify resources to help professionals working on FASD prevention or treatment of affected individuals.  

 

Pre-registration by April 11th is required. Link here.  

 

WEBINARS:

 

SAMHSA:Webinar #3 in the Underage Drinking Series: "Shape of the Solution to Underage Drinking" Wednesday, April 17,
2-3:15 p.m.

Register for the Webinar |   Series Website 

 

 

State-based Advocacy for Essential Health Benefit Design for Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders

Tuesday April 16,

3-4:30 p.m. 

Register for Webinar 

 

 

Transformative Impacts of the New Medicaid Expansion Program for Uninsured People with Mental Illness 
Wednesday, April 10th,  
1-2 p.m. 

 

May 12-18
is National Prevention Week
This year's theme emphasizes that the prevention of substance abuse and promotion of mental health starts with the choices each of us makes in our own life. Through our choices, we can set an example of health and well-being for others. With our voices-whether spoken or written-we can raise awareness of behavioral health issues and help create healthier and safer communities.

 

You can plan and host your own events, participate in the "I Choose" project, or take the "Prevention Pledge" to show your support and help raise awareness about behavioral health issues. 

CLMHD Calendar

  

APRIL    

 

Officer's & Chairs Conference Call

April 17 th  

8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.
Call In Only - contact CLMHD for access

 

Mental Hygiene Planning

April 11 th

11:30 a.m.-2:00 p.m.
41 State Street Albany Suite 505  

      

  
CLMHD SPRING FULL MEMBERSHIP MEETING HOLIDAY INN SARATOGA SPRINGS NY

 

Mentoring Workshop: Sunday, April 28  

10 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.


Full Membership Meeting: Mon-Tues April 29-30 
 

 

SAVE THE DATE:  CLMHD COMMITTEE DAY

Tuesday, June 25, 2013 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Location: Albany (TBD) 




 
 
The New York State Conference of Local Mental Hygiene Directors advances public policies and awareness for people with mental illness, chemical dependency and developmental disabilities.  We are a statewide membership organization that consists of the Commissioner/ Director of each of the state's 57 county mental hygiene departments and the mental hygiene department of the City of New York.
 
Affiliated  
  
April 4, 2013

SYSTEMS OF CARE IN ACTION

Last year, SAMHSA awarded upstate New York counties a $4 million dollar, four year grant to better serve children and youth with serious emotional disturbance. The Upstate New York System of Care (SOC) Expansion Project is a collaboration of upstate counties and state agencies whose goal is the full implementation of System of Care values and practices across all 55 counties in Upstate New York.

The article below highlights the Systems of Care initiatives in action, particularly the Westchester County SOC, which gives children access to a variety of services, but also ensures that these services are coordinated and individualized to meet a child and family's needs.  Children's Mental Health Services at the Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health received a 6-year Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services Program for Children and Their Families grant from SAMHSA's Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) in 1999.

For additional information about the Westchester County SOC program, please contact Michael Orth, Developmental Disabilities Services Second Deputy Commissioner, Westchester Department of Mental Health.

 


Mental Health Joins the Class as Nonprofits Open In-School Clinics

 

Yonkers elementary teacher Kathleen Richmond reads the crime reports in the newspaper before heading to school.

It's one way she prepares for the day at a school where children come to class after having seen neighbors shot, gang wars on the street and violence in their own families. Ninety percent of the time what happens on the streets comes into the schools, she said.

"Right away, within seconds, you can read on the faces of these kids that there's something going on," said Richmond, a fourth-grade teacher at the city's Martin Luther King Jr. School. Children turn up with a range of problems from post-traumatic stress and anxiety disorders to depression and learning disabilities.

 

In the past two years, nine satellite clinics have opened or expanded in schools in Yonkers, Peekskill, White Plains, Port Chester and Mount Vernon, bringing the number of school-based clinics in Westchester to 22. Last year, the first school-based clinic in Putnam opened at a Brewster Head Start, while Rockland BOCES is adding mental health services, part of a full-service community school model, to a new school in Haverstraw. At other schools in the region, nonprofits provide consultation, screening and specialized curriculum aimed at building more resilient kids, and they refer out those who need services.

 

"They're recognizing they can't do it alone," said Grant Mitchell, commissioner of the Westchester Department of Community Mental Health.

 

 

Opening Up, Students Transform a Vicious Circle

 

Restorative justice is a program increasingly offered in schools seeking an alternative to punitive "zero tolerance" policies like suspension and expulsion for students with a history of getting in trouble. Read More

 

 

Slide Show: Defusing Conflict in Schools

House Oversight Committee Tabulates Lower Medicaid Reimbursement Funds for NY  

The congresssional committee keeping 
an eye on New York's Medicaid costs has done the math on per-patient cut affecting providers who serve developmentally disabled New Yorkers under the new reimbursement rates.  Read More... 
Health Homes Have a Start Up Cost

 

New York state is moving to put Medicaid enrollees who have chronic illnesses and often other complex health issues into more coordinated care. The goal is to stop unnecessary emergency visits and other expensive, ineffective, crisis-driven treatment and replace it with a system in which the patient has a health home.

 

Enrolling the first wave of such patients-about 224,000 people-will cost about $1.2 billion, according to a report released last month by the United Hospital Fund. Some $1.1 billion of

that amount will be shouldered by the federal government. Medicaid costs should drop once the programs are running. The report, "Implementing Medicaid Health Homes in New York: Early Experience," is here

.
Health Information Exchange: IT Gets Real in the Field

In the past, the specialty behavioral health system operated independently from primary care in a paradigm that drove it along a completely separate path of systems development. But today, healthcare leadership has identified an urgent need to integrate primary and behavioral healthcare to improve the healthcare system in general.

Primary and behavioral healthcare providers agree that participation in health information technology and health information exchange - with client informed consent - is essential to realizing true integration. This is why the SAMHSA Strategic Initiative #6 for Health Information Technology seeks to ensure that "the behavioral health system, including states, community providers, and peer and prevention specialists, fully participates with the general healthcare delivery system in the adoption of Health Information Technology (HIT) and interoperable Electronic Health Records (EHR)."

As part of the SAMHSA-HRSA Primary and Behavioral Health Care Integration initiative and the SAMHSA National Prevention Strategy to link primary and behavioral healthcare needs, the SAMHSA-HRSA Center for Integrated Health Services (CIHS) provided technical assistance and training to 47 behavioral health provider organizations and five state health information exchanges (HIEs) or their state designated entities (SDEs) to identify the barriers to this participation and help them discover and implement real-world solutions.

These providers and the HIEs/SDEs addressed the challenges by adopting EHR technology and working together to find avenues for participation in health information exchange.

 

NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Mental Health System Planning Forums 2013

Community Forums help identify important goals and priorities that will improve mental health services and systems for New York City's children, youth, adults and families. Public testimony will be 3 minutes per individual or organization.   Please email your testimony in advance to:  here 


 

Borough

Date and Time

Location

Registration Deadline

 

Manhattan

 

 

Monday, April 22

3-6pm

 

 

DOHMH Auditorium

125 Worth Street, 2nd Floor

NY NY 10013

 

Friday, April 19th

 

 

Queens

 

 

Thursday, May 2nd

3-6pm

 

 

 

Gotham Center

3rd Floor Auditorium

42-09 28th Street

Long Island City, NY 11101

 

 

 

Tuesday, April 30th


NYSHealth and NCQA Briefing on the State of New York's Health Care Quality

Each year, the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) issues a "State of Health Care Quality Report" highlighting trends in health care quality at the national level. For the first time, NCQA has prepared New York-specific data on a range of quality measures, from blood pressure care for patients with diabetes to childhood immunization rates to nutrition counseling. The data document New York's performance over time and in comparison to other states and to the nation, broken out by health plan type.

 

On March 28, 2013, the New York State Health Foundation (NYSHealth) and NCQA co-hosted a briefing to discuss highlights of the data and how New York can use the findings to improve health care quality and patients' health. 

 

Access a recording and PowerPoint slides from the briefing.     

HHS Finalizes Rule Guaranteeing 100 Percent Funding for New Medicaid Beneficiaries

 

Effective January 1, 2014, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost of certain newly eligible adult Medicaid beneficiaries.  These payments will be in effect   through 2016, phasing down to a permanent 90 percent matching rate by 2020. The Affordable Care Act authorizes states to expand Medicaid to adult Americans under age 65 with income of up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level (approximately $15,000 for a single adult in 2012) and provides unprecedented federal funding for these states.  For more information on the improvements made to Medicaid click  here. 

 

New York is a National Medicaid Leader in Health Care Quality 

 

The National Committee for Quality Assurance analyzed New York State's Medicaid health care plan against 76 different quality measures and found that when it comes to offering the right type of care for common, costly diseases like diabetes, childhood obesity, smoking cessation and follow-up care for the mentally ill, New York is a national leader, second only to Massachusetts.
 

 

CMS proposes help for consumers navigating the Health Insurance Marketplace

 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a proposed rule today outlining standards that Navigators in Federally-facilitated and State Partnership Marketplaces must meet, and clarifying earlier guidance about the Navigator program.

 

Navigators are organizations that will provide unbiased information to consumers about health insurance, the new Health Insurance Marketplace, qualified health plans, and public programs including Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.

Navigators will be an important resource for consumers who want to learn about and apply for coverage in the new Marketplace.

 

CMS Ensures Greater Value For People In Medicare Drug And Health Plans

 

This guidance will give people in Medicare health and drug plans more value in the care they receive and greater protections against increasing costs.