Hawaii slashes mental health care by $24 million

The state's Adult Mental Health Division is cutting spending to try making up a projected shortfall of about $24 million in the current fiscal year by limiting case management to just hours per month

The dramatic cuts are expected to make up only half the shortfall and the Department of Health is still searching for additional ways to trim expenses. The division, which serves about 16,000 patients annually, announced two restrictions that are expected to save about $12.6 million:

• A cap on the number of case management hours that contractors can be reimbursed for is expected to save $10.2 million. Contractors will be limited to billing just 3.5 case-management hours per patient per month, compared with three hours per day.
• Shifting patients with private insurance off of state services is expected to save about $2.4 million.

State Health Director Chiyome Fukino outlined the new measures on Wednesday, Nov. 26, at the Queen's Medical Center to representatives of service providers. "We're going to work with our providers, we're going to look at all of our service arrays and we're going to evaluate what works and what doesn't work," she said.

Fukino said the department will monitor mental health care and she hopes there will not be a decline in services. "We believe we can continue to deliver even with fewer dollars," she said.  Click here for the complete story reported by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.