Michigan’s wasteful mental health system needs reform
Featured June 30, 2015 | freep.com | Vikram Reddy, Detroit Free Press I stared at the Excel sheet and looked at the first person on the list. She was in her mid-40s, single, white and had been to the emergency room over 38 times in one year. As the medical director for quality at a community hospital in Metro Detroit, I and several members of our staff met with our local community mental health agency to figure out how many of our Medicaid patients were both high utilizers of our emergency room and had a behavioral health diagnosis. I reviewed the medical record of Ms. X, the woman at the top of the list. Her chief complaints varied from headaches to back pain to abdominal pain. She was...