MHW: New Administrator Hyde Seeks to Raise SAMHA's Role, Collaborations
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
NYAPRS Note: Here’s a very hopeful piece about new SAMHSA Administrator Pam Hyde’s plans to raise that agency’s visibility and impact in Washington, especially in increased long awaited collaborations with other federal agencies.
New SAMHSA Administrator Has Eye On BH In Health Care Reform
Mental Health Weekly January 4, 2010
As Pamela S. Hyde moves forward in her new position as administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration SAMHSA), she makes it clear that issues surrounding behavioral health will be squarely at the center of all discussions once the House and Senate health care reform bills have been reconciled.
Hyde was confirmed by the Senate in November. She was former cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Human Services Department (See MHW, Oct. 12, 2009).
“Behavioral health has a big role to play in health care,” Hyde told MHW in an exclusive interview this month. “We know that behavioral health issues are a major cost driver to the health care system. We want to be at that table to make sure that behavioral health is addressed.” Such areas as cost containment and access to services are especially critical to the discussion, she added.
Passing parity was a major positive for the field and the agencies of jurisdiction are expected to issue the final regulations on the new mental health and addiction parity law this month.
“This parity bill is on the floor of where we need to be rather than the end of where we need to be,” said Hyde. The bill says that if a private insurer offers mental health coverage than it needs to be on par with medical health care. It does not mandate mental health care and does not cover things that are not in private health plans, he said.
Hyde said there are “tons of other areas” within the health care delivery system where behavioral health needs to be par with other health care issues — from how services are to be delivered to the scope of services to the workforce that provides those services. “I’m hopeful we can play a role in that as well,” Hyde said. “We have a long way to go.”
Forging Ahead On Interagency Development
On the topic of specific goals for the organization, Hyde noted that there is much going on in terms of interagency collaboration around drug abuse, prevention and wellness, veterans issues, health care reform, and health care finance, and that she hopes to have SAMHSA integral in those efforts.
“I hope to be able to lead SAMHSA at being at this table and making sure that the issue of behavioral health is always considered as we go forward,” she said. “I’m very pleased to be part of an administration that both collaborates well and clearly understands behavioral health supports.”
Hyde added, “My goal is to be a voice about those issues in the conversations [dealing with] interagency and triagency efforts.”
While Hyde said she has no immediate initiatives to discuss after being on the job for just a couple of weeks, there are some areas “percolating,” such as prevention and wellness and veterans military issues being among those efforts. In fact, she is scheduling meetings with the Veterans Administration (VA), the Department of Defense (DOD) and the National Guard to build on initiatives that they have already embarked on around the areas of veterans and mental health.
State budget issues continue to be a major concern, particularly having come from New Mexico, which like other states, is devastated by budget shortfalls, said Hyde.
“Each of the state agencies looking at mental health and substance abuse are going to have to work effectively at both advocating with and for other systems as well as working with other systems” to ensure that other systems will be able to provide those services, Hyde said.
Collaboration, Creativity Needed
Depending on what happens in the health care reform bill many adjustments need to happen, said Hyde. State [public mental health systems] are going to have to be more collaborative and more creative in putting funding streams together that serve people in their mental health system.
The New Mexico Behavioral Health Purchasing Collaborative, a single statewide system of care created in 2004, allows most state agencies involved in behavioral health treatment and recovery to work as one in an effort to improve mental health and substance abuse services for adults and children in New Mexico.
Collaboration is not simple, says Hyde, former co-chair of the collaborative. “It is a very complex building of relationships between people and between systems [and understanding] of how different systems, such as corrections, juvenile justice and education work,” she said.
For example, it’s important to understand the difference of how Medicaid programs works versus the fundamental culture of a system driven primarily by block grants, she said. “Those systems are going to be more successful when they work together,” she said. It’s difficult; it takes much time and resources, and patience, she added.