In response to the ongoing efforts to transform Oregon’s health care system Empower Oregon will be hosting a forum on January 17th bringing together key decision makers with mental health and addictions consumers, advocates, and front-line workers about the importance of quality addictions and mental health services. Empower Oregon with SEIU 503 has highlighted three priorities for Oregon’s health care transformation:
- Putting patients and families first: Not the priorities of insurance companies.
- Empowering consumers to make good choices for themselves.
- Creating quality health care jobs filled by a well-trained workforce with measureable, quality standards for care, compensation, and staffing levels.
Oregon’s addictions and mental health care system is being transformed over the next year through creating Coordinated Care Organizations (CCOs) for members of the Oregon Health Plan (OHP). Concurrently a parallel effort is being undertaken to rewrite the state contracts with counties to deliver addictions and mental health services to non-OHP consumers.
According to the Oregon Health Authority the goal of health care transformation is to provide better care at a reduced cost through better coordination of health services and moving from a fee-for-service model to one that allows for flexible funding and rewarding quality outcomes. This transformation process gives us all a chance to speak out about the importance of quality mental health and addictions services.
If you believe, as we do, that for health care transformation to be successful quality mental health and addictions need to be taken seriously services then join us on January 17th and share your story, CLICK HERE for more information and to sign-up. You can also share your story RIGHT NOW online and tell your story about the importance of quality mental health and addictions services.
Leadership and members should know how former state medical schools sidestepped citizens’ needs for generalist physicians and sold the public on the virtues of the high-tech medicine that brought schools more money. No doubt the high-tech care is some of the best in the world but the average sick kid with an earache need access to doctors and specially trained nurses and the patient with diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, and a weight problem should not have to make appointments with more than one doctor. $ Trillions have gone to private insurance companies, drug manufacturers, and academic medical centers that could have been better spent as taxes to keep medical schools focused on care for the majority.
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I will attend this meeting.