Behavioral Health – Page 6 – AZ Dept. of Health Services Director's Blog

Reducing the Painkiller Body-Count

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:36-07:00June 27th, 2014|Behavioral Health, General, Prevention|

Across the country prescription painkillers take out way more people than heroin and cocaine combined... and the story is the same in Arizona. Last year more than one person died almost every day in our state from prescription opioids... and more people died from painkiller overdoses than car crashes. In January, I blogged about how we've joined the Association [...]

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Teens & Tobacco: An AZ Success story

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:36-07:00June 26th, 2014|Behavioral Health, General, Prevention|

You’ve read on my blog before about Arizona’s statewide youth coalition Students Taking a New Direction, better known as STAND. The group just wrapped up its 5th annual youth conference to congratulate members on a great year and recognize the best of the organization. This year, Mohave County's Kingman Youth Coalition “Beating Up Teen Tobacco” [...]

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Ventanillas de Salud Snags the 2014 AMC Fannin Award

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:36-07:00June 24th, 2014|Behavioral Health, General, Preparedness, Prevention|

The annual plenary session of the Arizona-Mexico Commission wrapped up Friday night. The Ventanilla de Salud (Health Windows) program won the Arizona Mexico Commission’s Paul Fannin award. This is a top recognition for the Commission- with the award going to “… an organization that has demonstrated acts of goodwill and support toward the development of the Arizona-Sonora relationship.” [...]

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Major Regulatory Reform Milestone

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:40-07:00May 5th, 2014|Behavioral Health, Licensing|

Last week we passed a major milestone in our Strategic Plan when we filed our final new set of rules for the Arizona's 5,500 licensed healthcare facilities. With this week's filing - we've now completed our overhaul of the State's regulations for hospitals, behavioral health inpatient facilities, nursing care institutions, recovery care centers, hospices, behavioral health residential facilities, assisted living facilities, outpatient surgical centers, outpatient treatment centers, adult day health care [...]

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5 Years of Behavioral Health Innovation Paying Dividends (Part III)

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:41-07:00April 30th, 2014|Behavioral Health|

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve reflected about some of the innovative strategies that we’ve implemented with our behavioral health community partners over the last several years to improve the health status of folks with a serious mental illness. So far, I’ve covered integrated health homes and improvements to the crisis system. On the [...]

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5 Years of Behavioral Health Innovation Paying Dividends (Part II)

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:43-07:00April 22nd, 2014|Behavioral Health|

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll continue reflecting about some of the innovative strategies that we’ve implemented with our behavioral health community partners over the last several years to improve the health status of folks with a serious mental illness. Last week I wrote about the Integrated Health Homes initiative. Another success has been [...]

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ADHS SWAT Team Strikes

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:43-07:00April 17th, 2014|Behavioral Health|

Last week the ASH Pharmacy began having problems with the computer system that the medical staff use to order prescriptions for patients. Orders weren’t consistently showing up on the pharmacy computer screen or printing out. We implemented our back-up system right away, but the temporary work-around was time consuming. Our Information Technology team made this their [...]

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5 Years of Behavioral Health Innovation Paying Dividends (Part I)

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:43-07:00April 15th, 2014|Behavioral Health|

People with a serious mental illness die more than 30 years earlier than people without those challenges. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be reflecting about some of the innovative strategies that we’ve implemented with our behavioral health community partners over the last several years to improve the health status of folks with a serious [...]

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And Now, the Rest of the State

By Will Humble|2014-04-07T08:37:42-07:00April 7th, 2014|Behavioral Health|

Now that the transition to a new Behavioral Health Authority in Maricopa County is underway- we’re turning our attention to bringing integrated care to the rest of the state. We’ll be working hard throughout 2014 to set the course for integrating behavioral health and physical health for folks with a serious mental illness as we [...]

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Opening Day: Mercy Maricopa Integrated Care

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:44-07:00April 4th, 2014|Behavioral Health|

This was a milestone week for our behavioral health program. Tuesday marked the start of our contract with Mercy Maricopa Integrated Care as the regional behavioral health authority in Maricopa County. The transition has gone well this week. Literally 100s of things had to go right in order to have a smooth transition- including Information [...]

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