LAURINBURG — Behavioral health needs to be among the top priorities tackled by state lawmakers, health officials told members of the local legislative delegation.
Scotland Healthcare System hosted a legislative briefing with state Sen. Tom McInnis and state Reps. Garland Pierce and Ken Goodman. The event was also attended by board members, executives and staff of Scotland Memorial Hospital.
Cody Hand, vice president and deputy general council at North Carolina Hospital Association was the speaker. According to Hand, behavioral health is one issue North Carolina legislators can tackle without the worry of implications from a “rapidly changing federal government.”
According to Hand, behavioral health is one issue North Carolina legislators can tackle without the worry of implications from a “rapidly changing federal government.” Behavioral health includes mental health issues and drug abuse concerns.
“Behavioral health is something we need done this session,” Hand said.
One step that lawmakers could take to help is rewriting the state’s involuntary commitment law, according to the NCHA. The states law and how it is enforced is too broad and also limits behavioral health patients from getting the proper treatment, the group argues. The NCHA is in the process of rewriting the law for legislators now.
“Behavioral health and opioid addiction are huge issues for us right now,” said Greg Wood, CEO for Scotland Healthcare.
Wood also thanks lawmakers for attending the briefing.
“I appreciate you all being here and more so what you do for our communities and region, as well as you know health care very well,” he said
According to Wood, about 23 percent of patients treated at the hospital are on Medicaid, the state program with another 45 percent on Medicare, the federal program.
“Safe, high quality, compassionate care we do extremely well, the sustainable part is where we really look for our legislators for assistance,” Wood said.
Another way for the state to improve behavioral health would be to increase the number of beds available as well as create halfway houses, health officials said.
All three lawmakers agreed to work on the issue.
“Let’s fix it forward and not fix it backward,” McInnis said. “The potential based on the statistics we are receiving in the next 15 years we are going to have three million more people in North Carolina — all of those are going to have similar problems to the 10 million already here.”
McInnis also touched on the limited psychiatric care option in rural North Carolina and explained sometimes people who need help have to wait 90 days to see a specialist.
For healthcare in rural North Carolina, another challenge for 2017 will be figuring out how to attract new physicians.
“Our doctors are retiring faster than new doctors are entering the workforce,” Hand said.
“Our rural areas are not as attractive to the Millennial doctor as perhaps they would have been 50 years ago,” Hand said. “We have got to figure out new ways to attract them to rural North Carolina.”
Hand emphasized not only what hospitals do in terms of patient care, but what North Carolina hospitals do for communities besides patient care.
“What we do as hospitals is we prepare on a regular basis for anything that may come through our doors, any natural disaster that may play through, any problem that may come on an airplane from somewhere else,” Hand said.
“In North Carolina we have a broad network of hospitals that are all the safety net hospitals, so it doesn’t matter what your status is, you are going to go to the same hospital and receive the same high level of care regardless of your ability to pay,” Hand said.
During 2016, North Carolina hospitals were put to the test with some of the worst wildfires in history and one of the worst natural disasters in recent history, Hurricane Matthew.
“What we saw this last year with Hurricane Matthew and the wildfires and before that, Ebola, was that we didn’t just have to prepare to care for whatever socioeconomic status walked through the door, but we had to prepare to take those patients in times of crisis,” Hand said.
“When the hospital is down, people still need dialysis, when the hospital is down they still need their insulin injection and they still need their tests and they still need everything they need every day. It doesn’t matter what has happened in the community.”
In order for hospitals to afford this, they have to maintain a positive margin at the end of each year, according to the NCHA.
“We have got to have money at the end of the year left over to reinvest in the community,” Hand said.
As the federal government has cut disaster funding, North Carolina Hospitals have had to pick up more of the costs associated with disaster preparations, according to Hand.
“Over the last 10 years the federal government has cut our disaster preparedness fund and the reason for that is is because we don’t use that funding to care for patients, we use that funding to stay open for the patience that we have, but also to feed the community when their food supplies go down, provide the fresh drinking water, to do dialysis care, to give them a place to sleep — hospitals really become the go to place for everybody in the community during a natural disaster,” Hand said.
