Mental health care gets new rate

The State Department of Health and Human Services changed course Thursday on its rate cut for a basic mental health service.

After weeks of criticism for cutting the rate it paid companies from about $61 an hour to $40, state administrators decided on a price near the middle -- $51.28 a hour. And they decided to make the new rate retroactive. It will be as if the short-lived $40 an hour never happened.

"That was an arbitrary rate anyway," said Bob Hedrick, executive director of the N.C. Providers Council, a trade group.

Frustration with the state's struggling mental health system bubbled over when DHHS announced the $40 rate on April 5. Critics said the cut would put some companies out of business and force providers who were doing a good job to rely on less educated and less experienced workers.

Administrators said the cut was based on an audit of 167 companies that showed they were using less educated workers to provide the service, known as community support.

Hundreds of companies provide the service to children and adults who are mentally ill, drug addicts or alcoholics. The service can include counseling and help finding medical care or housing.

The state responded to the outcry by rushing to set another rate based on 16 companies' costs. That review resulted in the $51.28 announced Thursday. Hedrick said the participating companies thought the review was fair.

Connie Cochran, chief executive officer of Easter Seals UCP North Carolina, said it is reviewing cases of 1,300 of the 2,800 people in community support to see how much care they need and whether the nonprofit can afford to keep them. He said the agency can no longer afford to keep clients who need only case management, work that the most educated workers must do. Case managers are directors who make sure clients are getting the right amounts of the right kinds of care.

Clients who need about an hour of the professional service a month may have to go, Cochran said.

R. Jane Ferguson, CEO of Appalachian Counseling in Brevard, said the company's survival is no longer threatened, but workers will have to take on more clients.

"We're happy that they raised it from the $40," she said. "No one who had a professional agency could do it at that rate."