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Budget Summary FY2015

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Outside Section 231
Data Current as of:  10/17/2014




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Task force for reporting on mental health/substance abuse services

SECTION 231.   The secretary of the executive office of health and human services, in coordination with the center for health information and analysis and the division of insurance, shall convene and chair a special task force to implement new reporting mechanisms for the collection of information related to the provision of mental health or substance abuse services.

The special task force shall include the legislative chairs of the advisory committee convened pursuant to section 186 of chapter 139 of the acts of 2012, representatives of the insurance agency, patient advocates and behavioral healthcare providers, including hospitals operating emergency departments.

The task force shall consider the collection and coordination of current emergency department case mix reporting in the commonwealth and develop a statewide plan for the commonwealth to collect and centralize the following information: (i) the number of visits to each emergency department in the commonwealth per month; broken down by visit type: medical, mental health, substance abuse and combined medical, mental health or substance abuse; (ii) length of time between admission and evaluation by the attending emergency department physician; (iii) the type of insurance and carriers and the number of patients who are current or former clients of the department of mental health, the department of children and families or the department of developmental services; (iv) the number of required evaluations by an emergency service provider and, when applicable, the average length of time between the initial calls to the emergency service provider and the time the emergency service provider responded; (v) whether the patient's insurance type required a prior authorization request and, when applicable, the length of time between a submission of a prior authorization request to the patient's insurance plan and response time by the insurance plan; and (vi) the length of time between the admission decision and the departure time to post-emergency treatment.

The special task force shall file a report detailing its actions and any recommendations for statutory changes with the joint committee on mental health and substance abuse and the joint committee on health care financing by May 1, 2015.