New pilot tackles city’s long waitlist for mental health programs

Good morning and welcome to the Weekly New York Health Care newsletter, where we keep you posted on what’s coming up this week in health care news, and offer a look back at the important news from last week.

Beat Memo

New York City has quite a number of tools in its toolbox to address severe mental illness, but supply rarely meets demand.

That has been an ongoing issue with two of the city’s most popular community-based programs, a statewide model called Assertive Community Treatment and a city-launched initiative called intensive mobile treatment.

Both programs dispatch mental health care providers — including psychiatrists, nurses, social workers and peer counselors — to meet with their clients at home or in the community several times per month. In some cases, especially when clients are homeless, that requires providers to first find them.

The format, inevitably, means a given treatment team can care for only so many people at a time.

A fully staffed Assertive Community Treatment, or ACT, team serves either 48 or 68 people at a time, while intensive mobile treatment teams typically have a caseload of just over two dozen clients.

A news report last year found that over 1,000 of New Yorkers with serious mental illnesses are awaiting a spot on either an ACT or intensive mobile treatment team, a wait that may stretch as long as a year.

One reason for the wait is that some clients who have found success with ACT or intensive mobile treatment still remain on their team’s roster, because there are no similar but less rigorous programs to which they can graduate.

A new program being launched this fall by the Institute for Community Living, a nonprofit that runs ACT and intensive mobile treatment teams, is designed to tackle exactly that issue.

The three-year pilot, called STEPS, will serve as a step-down program for New Yorkers who could still benefit from mental health support and case management but no longer need such an intensive model of care.

The pilot will be able to serve approximately 250 people and is expected to reduce the citywide waitlists by about 10 percent, according to Jody Rudin, the organization’s CEO.

It is funded with a $2.3 million grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust.

“We designed STEPS to help an increased number of people receive the care they need to build stability, move off the streets, and lead their best lives,” Rudin said in a statement.

ON THE AGENDA:

— Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The New York State Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Board meets.

— Wednesday, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Care for the Homeless and BronxWorks host a policy seminar on New York City street outreach.

— Thursday at 10 a.m. The Public Health and Health Planning Council’s Committee on Establishment and Project Review meets.

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What you may have missed

— Temporary health-staffing agencies now have until Nov. 15 to register with the state Department of Health, after officials quietly extended the deadline for a second time. It was previously Oct. 30.

The registration system was enacted as part of the fiscal 2024 state budget amid growing concerns over the health care system’s widespread — and costly — use of agency nurses and other temporary staff due to the Covid pandemic. Originally, registration files were due in August.

Under the law, staffing agencies must submit materials demonstrating their “good moral character” and showing that their personnel meet minimum licensing, training and continuing-education standards. They also have to pay an annual registration fee of $1,000 and submit copies of executed agency contracts.

Odds and Ends

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TODAY’S TIP — Use fear and anxiety to your advantage.

STUDY THIS — Via CNN: People report feeling less pain when they’re listening to their favorite songs, researchers found.

What We're Reading

— CUNY halts investigation of Alzheimer’s researcher, The New York Times reports.

— Biden administration proposes fixes to No Surprises Act’s dispute resolution process, STAT reports.

— Via KFF Health News: “Smaller employers weigh a big-company fix for scarce primary care: Their own clinics.”

— Some hospital outpatient clinics could lose 340B drug discount program eligibility under a new HRSA policy, Modern Healthcare reports.

Around POLITICO

— Via Daniel Payne: “AI has arrived in your doctor’s office. Washington doesn’t know what to do about it.”

— Bernie Sanders calls for ‘adequate’ staff ratios from RWJ University Hospital during New Brunswick appearance, Daniel Han reports.

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