Mental Health News

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It seems that the government has been slacking off in mental health policy of late.  Washington D.C.’s mental health agency has failed to recover millions in denied Medicaid claims over the course of several years.  A recent audit has uncovered the gross ineptitude of the mental health agency’s financial system. 

The audit also found that of the approximately 1.4 million Medicaid claims that were submitted by the Department of Mental Health between 2002 and 2006, 500,000 of those claims were rejected.  However, by certain mental health laws the department is allowed to process and resubmit those claims so that they have a better chance of being approved, within a time frame of two years.  Yet, the audit found that the government has practically no system or process for doing so set up!

The Director of the Mental Health Department, Stephen Baron has issued a written response to the report that claimed the $30 million dollar figure quoted by the audit as unclaimed funds is over inflated by $5 million dollars.  Baron also admitted that his agency did lack the mental health policy to resubmit the claims prior to September 2006, but they have since then corrected the problem and resubmitted a total amount of $12.9 million in Medicaid claims for approval.  These resubmitted claims have resulted in reimbursement of $8 million.

The audit also found that the Department of Mental Health also failed to prevent it’s vendors from overspending their work orders and thus going over budget to the tune of $16.1 million dollars in the fiscal year of 2006.