NAMI Illinois Rejects Psychologists’ Attempts to Gain Prescription Privileges

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. I worked for a long time in Mental Health.

I watched insurance cut down inpatient stays from 28 to 21 to 18 to 14 days,
so moved over to outpatient, which, at the time, insurance was supporting since it cost much less than inpatient.

The inpatient facilities did full physical workups, including labs.
The outpatient programs, in different centers, rarely even referred to medical unless the client was already under dr. orders, but I never once had a physician contact me about the patient's mental health treatment, even when our center prescribed drugs on top of what the dr. was prescribing.
The ONLY except to this was when I worked with two drs, from India, who had to work at non-profit centers as part of their visa program.
THOSE guys were extremely good at holistic health approaches, tho they did tend to be a bit brusque with the mostly all female staff.
In all the time at outpatient, rarely was the "medical condition" aspect of the Mental health diagnosis addressed in staffing or on the charts.
Axis 3 would be noted, in the profile and 5 Axis diagnosis, but after than,rarely was mentioned.
Used to drive me crazy, since I was very much into holistic work.

Interestingly, at the rural clinics I preferred to work in, I did not see a lot of insurance driven treatment limits.
We DID have high non-compliance with all but the very seriously mentally ill, tho, so perhaps treatment limits did not have a chance to factor in very often.