A House panel on Tuesday approved legislation that aims to build on a mental health overhaul that became law last year.
This year, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, through House Bill 520, are trying to address a shortage of mental health providers and streamline the way agencies share information about patients. The House Committee on Public Health passed the bill unanimously.
State Rep. Todd Jones, a Republican from Cumming, said having a way for state agencies to share information could help address what he calls the “familiar faces” that law enforcement and mental health providers see time and time again.
The legislation calls on the Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission to work with the departments of Community Supervision, Corrections, Juvenile Justice and others to develop agreed-upon definitions of terms — such as “serious mental illness” and “recidivism” — to ensure consistent data collection from law enforcement.
“There is a small population in our state that takes up a huge amount of our resources,” said Jones, who is a co-sponsor of the bill. “And we have to understand that there’s effectively a merry-go-round between homelessness, the medical (or) health community — and that’s a broad umbrella — and the criminal justice system.”
HB 520 would also expand a student loan forgiveness program created last year for mental health providers who work in underserved areas of the state and take other steps to improve care. HB 520 would allow people who are already working in the mental health field and still have student loans to apply for loan forgiveness.
This year’s bill aims to increase capacity for people who need to receive inpatient care and would ask the behavioral health commission to do a “bed study” to determine how many people can receive inpatient behavioral health care in Georgia facilities.
Jeff Breedlove, a lobbyist for the Georgia Council for Recovery, applauded this year’s effort, especially tweaks that were made to ask the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities to identify providers who offer services that cater to various cultures and languages.
“What we’ve seen is a commitment by the House, in a bipartisan way, to continue to save lives by advancing policy to transform a broken system into a system that serves Georgia families,” Breedlove said.
Last year’s effort was a priority of then-House Speaker David Ralston, who aimed to ensure that mental health care was covered by insurance companies in the same way that physical health care is covered. Lawmakers also greatly increased funding for mental health services. Ralston died in November.
Last year’s bill aimed to enforce a federal law that requires “parity” in health coverage and take other steps to improve care. The federal government in 2008 enacted a law that aimed to require parity — meaning insurance companies were to cover mental health care the same way they do physical health care. Data has not been collected in Georgia to determine whether that is happening, but anecdotal evidence indicated it was not at the time.
The law also requires public health insurers, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and private insurers to file reports on parity to the commissioners of the Department of Public Health and Department of Insurance.
Georgia ranks low nationally on most measurements of mental health treatment and high in the percentage of residents who face challenges, according to a report this year by Mental Health America, a century-old nonprofit advocacy group. Georgia ranks 47th in the nation for the number of mental health professionals per capita at 640 residents for every one provider. The national average is 350 residents per provider.
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