Secretary of Health and Human Services Carmen Hooker Odom was appointed by Gov. Mike Easley when his first term began, then re-appointed in 2004. In a conversation I had with Sen. Martin Nesbitt, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Mental Health Reform, he indicated various ways this appointee “would not listen,” which I took to mean that she has been something of an obstructionist pertaining to mental-health-care reform.
As a provider, you can go broke trying to work with Odom. Last on the food chain related to HHS rulings are the endorsed providers. These companies are given the green light to work with clients by the Local Management Entities (LME), upon review of credentials and personnel. Endorsed providers have been in place for just about one year. Western Highlands LME and Smoky Mountain Center LME oversee the 18 counties in Western North Carolina. We’re lying on the floor, as the rug has been pulled out by Odom.
Community Support (CS) is the lynchpin service for working with Medicaid clients. Medicaid “leads,” in terms of N.C. mental-health services. On April 5, citing “overuse” and “bad apples,” Odom retroactively slashed all providers’ CS services by one-third, until the incensed providers drove home the point that this was a breach of contract. Given the fury and flurry of activities, Endorsed Providers now have Community Support funded fully to April 5. Medicaid drives the [services] car, and most children’s services are linked to Medicaid. Many adults receive Medicare, which is always primary in terms of payment; Medicaid picks up the unpaid tab except for the co-pay that clients submit to providers. Co-pay is hard to demand when [talking with] clients about the reduction in food stamps six months ago. Beans it is, again, tonight.
When individual providers associated with endorsed-provider companies attend LME regional meetings for updates, usually every month or two, you can witness the attempts of LME personnel to read between the lines of Odom’s edicts, otherwise known as “drafts,” in order to protect the providers. LME’s have no interest in seeing an avalanche of endorsed-provider failures such as took place when New Vistas collapsed in Buncombe County. Strangely, that was on the very day that Mike Mosley, director of Mental Health under Odom, came to an obscure auditorium at Western Carolina University, 55 miles away from Asheville, to hear how how mental-health-care reform was working in this area. I don’t think there was a single person from Buncombe present to ask what the hell was going on. It’s quite a scene: Mosley way past Sylva as mental health was collapsing in Buncombe—on the same day.
There is no reason to think Odom’s behavior is going to change after six years. Gov. Easley: you appointed her. Please relieve us of Carmen Hooker Odom.
— Marsha V. Hammond
Asheville
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