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Central to ����������’s Medicaid waiver is the 5-year DSRIP initiative, aimed at promoting community-level collaborations to improve care outcomes while achieving a 25% reduction in avoidable hospital use over five years. Twenty-five Performing Provider Systems (PPS) were selected to develop these collaborations and are receiving DSRIP funds to help facilitate the transition to value-based care.

Over the last 2 days, upstate PPSs came to Albany and gave progress reports () to the NYS DSRIP Oversight Panel. Those followed a presentation by the state’s independent assessor, Public Consulting Group (PCG), detailing the implementation timeline, as well as achieved and upcoming milestones ().

During the course of the reports, ���������� was gratified to hear the terms “behavioral health” and “community-based organizations” mentioned over and again. Even as PPS presenters were early in the process with respect to integrating behavioral health and primary care, a number of the oversight panelists repeatedly focused on its importance including OMH and OASAS Commissioners Anne Sullivan and Arlene Gonzalez-Sanchez, Judy Wessler, Steven Berger, SCAA’s Kate Breslin, and Medicaid Matters NY’s Lara Kassel. 

For their part, many PPSs demonstrated compelling commitments to behavioral health service recipients and providers. For example, one planned to invest $250,000 in behavioral health, while another, a rural PPS, has made arrangements for 24/7 psychiatric coverage.

While such pledges are indeed encouraging, there is much to be done over the next several months and years to ensure that, as one PPS rep said, we “get to the point where we take mental pain as seriously as physical pain,” and that “trauma survivors are regarded the same as those who live with diabetes.”

���������� is closely tracking this work, and will keep you apprised of updates as they happen. Please stay tuned for upcoming webinars and a January conference that digs deeper into these issues.