One in Five Hospital Admissions are for people w/ mental health diagnoses

If one wanted to diminish this statistic, it would seem that one would beef-up outpatient services. Instead, under Smoky Mountain Center LME, what has happened, is that outpatient therapy can only be had under Community Support Services, which includes all other services, and is constantly being defunded and collapsed due to massive paperwork demands.

Western Highlands Network has attempted to diminish paperwork for Basic Level Services, as associated with truncated versions of paperwork for state funded clients.

Not so at SMC LME for any provider attempting to work outside of Meridian Behavioral Health Services which IS essentially the clinical arm of SMC LME.

I do not see why NC citizens should continue to put up w/ this kind of mis-treatment. I don't see why jotting the t's and dotting the i's should preclude efficient mental health care treatment. But that is what NC DHHS has created in an attempt to reign in the expenditure of money. And some of the LME's have expanded that notion to the extreme.

It seems that there should be another way to keep the brake on the outflow of cash. They could have started with an accurate actuarial picture of services instead of Carmen Hooker Odom's throwing a dart at the side of a house.

Such 'braking' might include utilizing professional mental health care providers which are at this time not allowed to function within the SMC LME catchment area. They are good value for the money and they keep people out of the hospital if they are authorized to treat patients.
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1 in 5 Hospital Admissions Are for Pts w/ Psychological Disorders


The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released the
following announcement:

One in Five Hospital Admissions Are for Patients with Mental Disorders

About 1.4 million hospitalizations in 2006 involved patients who were
admitted for a mental illness, while another 7.1 million patients had a
mental disorder in addition to the physical condition for which they
were admitted, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency
for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The 8.5 million hospitalizations involving patients with mental illness
represented about 22 percent of the overall 39.5 million
hospitalizations in 2006.

AHRQ's analysis found that of the nearly 1.4 million hospitalizations
specifically for treatment of a mental disorder in 2006:

- Nearly 730,000 involved depression or other mood disorders, such as
bipolar disease.

- Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders caused another 381,000.

- Delirium -- which can cause agitation or inability to focus attention
-- dementia, amnesia and other cognitive problems accounted for 131,000.

- Anxiety disorders and adjustment disorders - stress-related illnesses
that can affect feeling, thoughts, and behaviors - accounted for another
76,000.

- The remaining roughly 34,000 hospitalizations involved attention-
deficit disorder, disruptive behavior, impulse control, personality
disorders, or mental disorders usually diagnosed in infancy or later
childhood.

This AHRQ News and Numbers is based on data from Hospital Stays Related
to Mental Health, 2006 (HCUP Statistical Brief #62) found at
.

The report uses statistics from the 2006 Nationwide Inpatient Sample, a
database of hospital inpatient stays that is nationally representative
of inpatient stays in all short-term, non-Federal hospitals. The data
are drawn from hospitals that comprise 90 percent of all discharges in
the United States and include all patients, regardless of insurance
type, as well as the uninsured.