Here’s a breakdown from MHANYS of the impact on mental health of the budget extender bill passed yesterday by the NYS Legislature:

 Last night, the legislature passed the Governor’s extender bill for the week which included the mental health budget. The actual breakdown of the extender bill is listed   below.

 What this means for us is several fold:

 1)       Most importantly, this means that funding for mental health programs will not cease as of July 1^st.  I spoke with the budget folks at OMH this morning and they told me that they were doing business as usual regarding getting contracts ready to be sent to counties and for not for profits who get money directly from OMH. That said due to the fiscal crisis, there still may be some delays. They told me to let them know in the coming weeks if any MHA’s have not gotten their quarterly payments within a reasonable time frame.

 Thank you all for your advocacy on this issue. We were very fearful that a worst case scenario would have existed that would have impacted programs as of July 1. We held a press conference with several of our colleagues last week that helped define the significance of this issue and the stories you shared were very helpful to the press conference.

 2)       The extender bill as passed keeps the safety net in place for mental health funding. Compared to other areas of the state budget, cuts to mental health were not dramatic. The cuts include delays for new PROS start ups and delays in residential funding. A lot of the cuts as you can see from the material listed below are largely on the state operations side.

 Again, great advocacy by all of you this year in getting out the message about protecting the mental health safety net. Working with NYAPRS and ACL, this has been our theme from the beginning of this legislative session and through all your advocacy, we were heard on this issue.

 3)       We are not out of the woods for this year. Next week, the Governor wants to include an extender bill that revolves around education. This is the five hundred pound gorilla that is currently being negotiated. Beyond the education bill, there is still also a two billion dollar budget gap in the budget. There have been discussions about resolving that gap through either borrowing, additional enhancements or more proposed cuts….Our greatest fear at this point is that they could reopen the mental hygiene extender and take additional money. We have to make it clear that we cannot take additional cuts from mental hygiene to close the state’s budget gap.

 We will be putting an action message together that you can share with the legislature about our concerns.

 Thank you for all your advocacy on these budget issues.

NYS Office of Mental Health (OMH)

OMH Local Actions   Net Savings: $27 million

·        Enhance audit efforts, including recovery of over payments from third party payers and exempt income revenue in excess of operating costs.

·        Change billing practices by carving out Medicaid prescription drug costs from the operating costs of residential treatment facilities.

·        Slowdown growth for new bed development ($3M) and for the PRO's program ($2M).

A portion of the savings is being reinvested in a multi-year plan for adult home residents with mental illness.

OMH State Operations Efficiencies. Net Savings: $43 million

·        Reducing non-critical staff via attrition

·        Converting certain information technology consultant staff to less costly State employees

·        Reducing overtime and the use of stand-by/on-call shifts;

·        Increasing the use of alternative work schedules;

·        Delaying the "unmet needs" study to October 2011; and,

·        Eliminating all non-essential non-personal service spending.

OMH Inpatient Restructuring  Net Savings: $9 million

·        Eight psychiatric center wards will be closed at various facilities, reducing State-operated inpatient capacity by approximately 5 percent. The resources associated with closing six wards will be used to support less costly and more appropriate community programs, and two wards will be replaced with Transitional Placement Program beds, a less staff intensive outpatient model designed to support the transition of patients to community care.

OMH Forensic/SOMTA Reforms   Net Savings: $11 million

·        The census for civilly confined sexual offenders is projected not to exceed 230 individuals in SFY 2010-11. As a result, inpatient capacity for sexual offenders at Manhattan Psychiatric Center will no longer be required.

·        The bill also reflects efforts to encourage courts to use video-conferencing to reduce transportation, overtime, and security costs