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Lawmaker Says Mental Health and Addiction Services Redesign is on Schedule

photo of Sen. Dave Burke
KAREN KASLER
/
STATEHOUSE NEWS BUREAU
The services for low-income Ohioans will be moving into Medicaid managed care by July 1.

The state is moving mental health and addiction services for low-income Ohioans into Medicaid managed care by July 1, but providers say this huge redesign is straining their finances and could shut them down. But a key lawmaker involved in legislation relating to this redesign says it’s unlikely to be delayed.

Republican Sen. Dave Burke chairs the Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee, and he says he’s heard the concerns about the redesign, including reducing payments for some services and increasing pay for others, and extending billing cycles from seven days to 30 days. But he says the redesign is on schedule.

“I would probably say that the movement around the delay is almost nonexistent. The movement's actually around finding remedies for the problems that we have at hand, and cash flow as you mentioned is the primary one,” he said.

Burke says one of those could be cash advances to providers. More than 60 percent of providers who responded to a recent survey said they were getting less money than they budgeted for from Medicaid, and just over half said they have less than two months’ worth of operating cash on hand.

Karen is a lifelong Ohioan who has served as news director at WCBE-FM, assignment editor/overnight anchor at WBNS-TV, and afternoon drive anchor/assignment editor in WTAM-AM in Cleveland. In addition to her daily reporting for Ohio’s public radio stations, she’s reported for NPR, the BBC, ABC Radio News and other news outlets. She hosts and produces the Statehouse News Bureau’s weekly TV show “The State of Ohio”, which airs on PBS stations statewide. She’s also a frequent guest on WOSU TV’s “Columbus on the Record”, a regular panelist on “The Sound of Ideas” on ideastream in Cleveland, appeared on the inaugural edition of “Face the State” on WBNS-TV and occasionally reports for “PBS Newshour”. She’s often called to moderate debates, including the Columbus Metropolitan Club’s Issue 3/legal marijuana debate and its pre-primary mayoral debate, and the City Club of Cleveland’s US Senate debate in 2012.