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The Behavioral Health Community Today: Change, Challenge and Opportunity
Over the last several years, the community behavioral health landscape has changed. New York State is driving reforms toward achieving the Triple Aim for better care and improved health at lower costs. In doing so, the community-based behavioral health sector has been charged with undergoing...
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A Performance-Driven Culture in a Children’s Mental Health Agency
Developing a performance-driven culture in the children’s mental health system is a complex process that includes engaging, assessing, treatment planning, gathering data, measuring outcomes, and evaluating and continually improving care. Although evidence-based practice (EBP) has become a...
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Will “System Transformation” Transform the System? Before We Celebrate: 20 Questions That Need Answers
System transformation is underway in New York State and throughout the United States through the development of elaborate financial structures such as accountable care organizations and health homes. No doubt these new structures will change the way business is done in the mental health system. But...
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Substance Use Disorder Measures and Preparing for Value-Based Purchasing
In a previous column, I wrote about the measures for value-based purchasing being developed together with the New York State Department of Health and the Center on Addictions, our partner on many projects. Our work to develop clear measures has set the foundation for insurance plans, providers and...
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Building Partnerships to Transform Autism Services
Since 2003, NEXT for AUTISM has launched an average of 1.5 programs per year, a pace that matched the urgent needs of individuals and families living with autism and our own desire to help grow the field of autism services. As proud as we are of this pace, we could not have achieved it alone. We...
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The East New York Health Hub: Realizing the Promise of Whole Health
Over the last few decades, there has been an increasing focus on health care reform and bending the cost curve through a combination of new approaches including social determinants of health, trauma-informed treatment, health equity, patient engagement and integrated care. While these elements have...
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Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) – Now Approved for OCD
The last few months have seen major advancements of TMS in the treatment of psychiatric illness. In August TMS was approved by the FDA for the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, a third indication after depression in 2008 and migraine with aura in 2013 (this approval was broadened in...
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Turn and Face the Change: Children’s Medicaid Redesign
Change is inevitable. Change has and will always be a part of life, but it seems that the last couple of decades have brought about an unprecedented rate and scale of change in our society. Technology, of course, can be identified as a driving factor and has radically transformed every aspect of...
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The Promise and Peril of Performance Measurement
Few would dispute the assertion that our behavioral healthcare system and the many institutions on which it depends are in a state of transformation, if not upheaval. This transformation is characterized by many overarching themes and trends, most of which aim to enhance the quality of care...
