“Our fundamental issue is the ‘scale and spread’ question,” Dr. Conway said, speaking about all CMS-funded programs.
Behavioral health facilities and some primary care facilities seeking accreditation from the Joint Commission also were put on notice by Margaret VanAmringe, the commission’s executive vice president of public policy and government relations. Ms. VanAmringe told the audience that, as of this year, the commission is adding a measurement-based requirement for behavioral health facility accreditation using a patient-tracer method that will collect data on what kind of interaction occurred between a patient and every provider at the facility. The commission will be taking public comment on the change, but Ms. VanAmringe said the decision to include the requirement already had been made.
“We want to get it in place by CMS’s [new collaborative] reimbursements in 2017,” she said.
Philanthropists also were called out for not doing their part to improve parity. “Philanthropists, get in the game! They’re absent,” Mr. Kennedy said. “It’s an outrage that grant makers in health [care] ... fail to [insist] that everything they fund has a mental health dimension. What a revolution [it would be] ... if philanthropy had a gold standard for best practices in funding parity.”
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