The opening of a new hospital last week in Florence was anything but usual for folks in our Licensing Division. Since the hospital will also take care of prisoners, the staff had to work closely on the floor plan to make sure it met both medical and security needs. The hospital had to be able to serve all patients, but needed to have extreme security to protect health and safety of all patients as well. Thanks to their hard work – there are now twice the number of hospital beds available in Florence!
Thanks to the licensing architects in Special Licensing: Rohno Geppert, Lois Adams, Savita Chandragiri, Connie Belden, Shirley Newman, and Nancy Klaum from Medical Licensing as well as Tom Salow and his team in Rules- Good Work!
I’ve written often over the last few weeks about our priority over the next couple of years to better integrate primary healthcare and psychiatric care in AZ, and that last week HHS approved the Health Homes Planning Grant which will focus on improving coordination of care and increasing access to primary care and prevention services, resulting in meaningful improvements in quality of life and health status.
Making integration happen effectively will take coordination among numerous parts of the Department (much like the work that was required for medical marijuana). We’ll need to coordinate updated IT and business needs as well as public health prevention and licensing, and of course behavioral health. Licensing will be an especially important partner because our medical and behavioral health licensing teams inspect AZ treatment facilities.
One of the challenges that we’ve been facing as we begin our integration efforts is that the licensing rules for medical and behavioral health facilities sometimes make integration more difficult than it needs to be, and one of our goals over the coming months is to overhaul our administrative code (rules) for behavioral health facilities. In the mean time, our offices of Medical and Behavioral Health Licensing has been working very closely with a number of our service providers in the central, eastern and southern areas of the state to ease the licensing process as Arizona embraces integrative health care. Presently, there are a series of projects under construction that we anticipate will be looking to license this summer.
As part of our overall planning for the implementation of integrative health care, we’ve been connecting with prospective licensees to provide technical assistance, concentrating on architectural requirements and rule and service delivery. By taking a proactive stance with licensees, we can cut down on additional visits to the site to navigate compliance at a later date. That way, providers can start meeting the needs of their community in underserved areas.
Medical licensing has been busy over the last few months preparing to license Abortion Clinics. Back in 1999, a law was passed (ARS § 36-449.01 36-449.02 36-449.03) that required ADHS to license and inspect abortion providers if they provide 5 or more first-trimester abortions in a month or if they provide any 2nd or 3rd trimester abortions as an abortion clinic. Hospitals were exempted. The 10-year legal battle over how to implement the law ended earlier this year- with an agreement that we’ll begin licensing and inspecting the clinics beginning November 1. The new rules are posted in the Arizona Administrative Register, November 6, 2009 (15 AAR 1822).
Our medical licensing team has been busy providing technical assistance trainings which focus on ways to comply with the new licensing requirements, including going over easy to understand checklists, so that we have a smooth transition. In addition, our medical facilities website has been enhanced to provide all the licensing materials and resources to meet this new licensing category.
In other news, our Long Term Care team will be conducting an interactive training program on October 14 for folks at the ADES, AHCCCS and the 12 ICFMR (intermediate care facilities for the mentally challenged) facilities in Arizona regarding the Medicare requirements for these kinds of facilities. There are 12 facilities like these in Arizona that require Medicare certification. Our goal for the training is to help get staff up to speed with the changing dynamics and requirements for these kinds of facilities so that they’re all squared away when we get there for our routine surveys. Thanks for being proactive!
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Integration Licensing Forums
November 30th, 2011Earlier this year the Governor signed HB 2634 which directs us to develop new rules for licensing places that can provide both behavioral and physical health services. We’re excited about this rulemaking because it supports our efforts to establish coordination and collaboration between all behavioral health and physical health providers. We’ve developed a preliminary plan to facilitate the integration of behavioral and physical health services in health care institutions. As part of the plan… we’re holding public forums to share information about the plan starting today.
Anybody interested is invited, just simply sign-up for a forum soon, as seating capacity is limited! We encourage input and participation in this important rulemaking process. We’ve also established a User Voice blog so that everyone has an opportunity to contribute their thoughts and opinions.
The first forum was this morning in Phoenix and it was packed. Those who came had great questions and got a lot out of it. There are three more forums that you can take part in - December 9 (Tucson), December 14 (Mesa), and December 14 (Apache Junction). More details are available on the behavioral health licensing rule website.
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