SMI clients denied AHCCCS need not apply for integrated Home Healthcare services within the People of Color Network and other mental health service care providers under the umbrella of Magellan- the current Regional Behavioral Health Authority (RBHA) in Arizona.
Integrated Home Health clinic’s in Arizona are being criticized for “cherry picking” clients from within different provider networks that serve the seriously mentally ill or SMI.
Currently IHH clinic will only serve those SMI clients who have AHCCCS health insurance. Those without that coverage need not apply.
“You currently have a situation where not all SMI clients assigned to a particular clinic are treated equally. Some are openly discriminated against on the basis of what type of insurance they have or don’t have”, said one client assigned to the Capitol Center on 1540 W Van Buren, part of the People of Color Network, who refused to go on record for fear of being punished for speaking out against their clinic.
The disparity is so great that almost 30% -40% of SMI clients assigned to a particular clinic are not eligible for IHH care currently. Officials who work within the clinic system that serve SMI clients alibi this situation by saying that under Obama care these clients have a means of getting healthcare insurance through another source – somewhere else. Which may or may not be the case.
While all clients have qualifying SMI diagnosis’s – the state and federal government doesn’t necessarily accept some of these individuals as being disabled? Thus many fall through the cracks of the system – by design.
Oddly enough the Social Security Administration often refuses SSI and SSDI payments and accompanying Medicaid coverage to recipients designated with qualifying SMI diagnosis’s based on such arbitrary standards as “their ability to work or get a job” – even though many suffer chronic homelessness and long stretches of unemployment as a direct result of their mental illness…
Currently a person with SMI can only get AHCCCS (Arizona’s version of Medicaid) by apply for it through the state or Social Security administration.
IHH ( Home Health clinics ) integrate mental and physical health care for some 14,000 “Medicaid-eligible individuals” in the central Arizona behavioral health system who are challenged with serious mental illness. The rest of the estimated 60,000- 70,000 can apparently go elsewhere.
IHH supposedly enhances the quality and length of life for these individuals, many of whom die 32 years younger than their peers not challenged with mental illness.
More than 3,000 people have already participated in IHH through eight integration sites in Maricopa County.
Several more integration sites will open in 2014 as part of a push in that direction.
IHH is a partnership of Magellan Health Services of Arizona, Maricopa Integrated Health System (MIHS), and central Arizona’s four adult SMI provider network organizations (PNOs): CHOICES Network, Partners in Recovery, People of Color Network and Southwest Network.
It should be noted that under our dysfunctional health care delivery system in the United States – insurance companies often times discriminate against people without insurance, or the ability to pay for services – AHCCCS is no exception unfortunately. This carries over to those who claim to serve the SMI community in Arizona.
“The system is exclusive not inclusive of all SMI clients”, said one client at the Capitol Center, who refused permission to allow us to use her name. “Its just another form of discrimination against some SMI clients who are assigned here”, she added.
The Governor of the State of Arizona Jan Brewer’s office refused to return calls or respond to emails on this questions. As did Magellan which see’s nothing wrong with setting up a system that discriminates against some SMI patients and not others, based solely on what type of insurance coverage they have or don’t have .