It’s All About Behavioral Health Services!

December 14, 2022

Early this afternoon the Governor is going to announce his budget initiatives for BH Services and how they plan to address the ongoing TDO crisis in Virginia.  Yesterday, at the Behavioral Health Commission Meeting, Secretary Littel gave a framework for what the Governor will propose.  The slide deck is available here. 

During the discussion of his presentation there were a couple of bright spots – one being that he has heard our plea (along with that of others) to use the opportunity of rebidding the MCO contracts to require some consistency, such as a single credentialing system and a single pre-auth system.


The JLARC Report on the CSBs, which was reasonably balanced and emphasized the staffing difficulties (though did not necessarily connect staffing issues to some of the performance concerns),  was presented immediately before the preview by Secretary Littel. We are concerned that there is still a disconnect between the needs and plans to address them, and the reality “on the ground.”    There are several other issues from the JLARC report to address, but they can wait!


As I said yesterday, “we are grateful for the Governor’s ongoing support and for the dedication of Secretary Littel and Commissioner smith in creatively attempting to solve these longstanding issues.” 


We will have more details of the Governor’s Proposals on Friday when we brief on the budget.