OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Improving Access to Emergency Psychiatric Care Act

Floor Speech

Date: Nov. 16, 2015
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Health and Health Care

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Ms. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Improving Access to Emergency Psychiatric Care Act.

As we work to reform our broken mental healthcare system, it is critical that we build upon programs that provide resources to underserved and vulnerable populations at all points along the spectrum of care.

Today, with the passage of this bill, we have the opportunity to extend the vital Medicaid emergency psychiatric demonstration project. This demonstration project, which recently expired, ensures greater access to essential emergency psychiatric care for Medicaid patients.

This bipartisan bill will ensure that hospitals across our Nation will be able to provide community members in need with inpatient psychiatric beds.

In my home district in Sacramento County, this demonstration project has provided great benefits to our system of care. Medi-Cal beneficiaries have greater access to mental health services, and there has been a reduction in readmission rates at local hospitals.

In fact, by the final year of the 3-year demonstration project, the number of individuals rehospitalized within 30 days of their initial stay decreased by 20 percent in Sacramento County.

The project has improved coordination of care for mental health patients by streamlining planning efforts between inpatient and outpatient providers. In addition, Sacramento County has been able to reinvest savings generated by the project into programs that build greater community alternatives for patients identified as high utilizers of inpatient and emergency departments.

All of these improvements add up to a community mental health system in California that is better able to focus on the whole spectrum of care for underserved patients, from prevention to treatment to the crisis stage.

There is still much more work to do to improve the mental health system, but we must not reverse our significant progress by failing to renew this demonstration project.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on S. 599, the Improving Access to Emergency Psychiatric Care Act.

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