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 [...]
ADHS Wins National Award for Cardiac Receiving Center Program
Our Bureau of EMS received 1st Place in this year’s 2010 Association of State and Territorial Health Officials “Vision Award” for our creative (and really inexpensive) Arizona Cardiac Receiving Center Program. The annual ASTHO Vision Awards recognize outstanding state health department programs and initiatives that use a creative approach to address public health needs or problems. We’ll be recognized at [...]
Behavioral Health Performance Improvements
By working closely with our behavioral health contractors over the last couple of years we’ve been able to make some significant improvements in the quality of care that we’re providing. Examples of our accomplishments are available in newly created outcome dashboards developed by CPSA, NARBHA, Cenpatico and Magellan. The dashboards provide monthly reports using web-based tools, are accessible to anyone [...]
SECC Campaign
The annual State Employee Charitable Campaign starts this month and will run for 6 weeks. Employees will get some additional information about this year’s campaign shortly, but I wanted to let you know about a special part of the campaign for ADHS this year. I know that the furloughs and the unemployment situation (for your family members) are a hardship [...]
Healthy Schools
I thought I’d do a piece on school environmental health now that school’s back in session. About 1 million Arizona kids and 100,000 adults spend a big chunk of their day in Arizona’s public, private and charter schools. Because schools can often be crowded environments, it’s important operate them in a way that maximizes a healthy environment. A few years [...]