“Health Tourism”
I attended the “First Forum of Health and Retirement Tourism” at the beginning of September in Alamos, Sonora. The meeting was part of a Sonora’s health tourism initiative that’s focused on improving the retirement infrastructure, providing more opportunities for “Baby Boomers” to retire in Sonora. They also have a goal of building an infrastructure for Assisted Living so that folks [...]
AHCCCS Acute Care Enrollee’s to be Automatically Enrolled in RBHAs
Beginning October 1, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System will automatically enroll all Acute Care members into their local Regional Behavioral Health Authority (RBHA) or Tribal RBHA (T/RBHA). The plan eliminates the need for a separate administrative enrollment with the T/RBHA (and the associated paperwork) and streamlines the delivery of services, better integrate physical & behavioral health care. The T/RBHAs will also assume [...]
Behavioral Health Services in SE Arizona
Folks that receive publicly-funded behavioral health services in Cochise, Santa Cruz, Greenlee and Graham Counties will soon transition to a new Regional Behavioral Health Authority (RBHA). In March, ADHS awarded contracts for all of the areas outside of Maricopa County. We awarded the contract for Cochise, Santa Cruz, Greenlee and Graham Counties to Cenpatico Behavioral Health of Arizona (Cenpatico) but [...]
Arizona Breaking Through the National Smoking Trend
A new report from the CDC this week showed that the smoking rate across the US has stayed flat at about 20% over the last 5 years. Not so in Arizona, where we’ve decreased from 20% in 2005 to 16% in 2009, according to our latest BRFS report. As is the case across the country, the folks in Arizona that [...]
Behavioral Health Medicine Transition Update
As you recall, the ADHS budget reduction last fiscal year required us to scale back the services we provide to folks who were receiving behavioral health services but don’t qualify for AHCCCS (called Non-Title XIX). We also needed to switch to a “generic formulary” for Non-Title XIX folks on July 1 (which saves about $7M/year). We had initially intended to [...]
Nourishing Arizona’s “Food Deserts”
One of the ways ADHS can help eliminate Arizona’s food deserts is to try to get our vendors (the businesses that accept WIC coupons) to broaden their food inventories with healthier foods. The ADHS Program Integrity Team works to get this done. The Team actively reaches out to the vendor communities (grocery stores and other food retailers) to conduct technical [...]