How Smoky Mountain Center LME/ MCO Makes It Hard For Medicaid Providers to Simply Provide Care

My letter today to NC State Representative associated with Smoky Mountain Center LME/ MCO creating roadblocks so providers can function, do their work, get paid. Avila is one of 3 Chairs in NC State Legislature that oversees NC DHHS:

Date: March 22,2016

RE: speaking with SMC LME/MCO attny Ms. Mody today re:obtaining my zixcorp emails sent to me alone from SMC personel

Dear Representative Avila: 

Thank you for continuing to speak with me regarding my interactions with SMC LME/MCO with whom I have been a provider for over 10 years.  I have been a Licensed Psychologist for 20 years. 

Today I asked Ms Mody if I could have a copy of my zixcorp internal emails----emails between myself and SMC employees for last year, particularly as associated with what I assumed was my re-accreditation last spring.  As I advised you, that re-accreditation is good for 5 years according to DHHS employee who called me last week.  That employee indicated that I had a deadline in terms of being re-accredited of 4.1.2016 which puzzled me which is why I asked for the zixcorp records. 

Ms. Mody indicated that : 1 we don't keep those records, to which I replied that you had indicated to me that they were in fact kept  2. she would have to ask the General Counsel to see if I had to ask for a special procedure related to public documents.  

This is exactly the kind of obstructionism I am talking about as pertaining to working with this LME/MCO.  

I will let you know if I get the records. 

Pass this to anyone you like. I am putting it on my NC Mental Health Reform blogspot  Yes, undoutedly, this does not make me popular with the LME's. 

Fortunately, Western Highlands Network went under due to mismanagement.  IMHO, we need a one payer system.  All of this would disappear and we would save money. 

Sincerely, Marsha V Hammond, PhD

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This is not rocket science. 1 System = 1 set of administrators all on the same page = better care for  less $...

"..... If we established a single, universal, publicly-funded and publicly-administered health care financing infrastructure, it would function as a monopsony, representing the people, that would work for us to dramatically reduce administrative waste while preventing clandestine rent-seeking gains.

In the words of Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow - the leading authority in markets and health care - single payer is “better than any other system.”