Georgia House strives for further mental health improvements

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia House is moving forward with a plan that aims to do more to recruit mental health professionals and find ways to help people bouncing between hospitals, prisons and homelessness.

Lawmakers on Thursday voted 163-3 in favor of House Bill 520, sending it to the Senate for further debate.

Supporters say the measure builds on a major mental health push led in 2022 by the late Republican House Speaker David Ralston. They say finding solutions is a multi-year process.

“We’ve reached Everest, the first base camp,” said Rep. Todd Jones, a Cumming Republican who is co-sponsoring the bill. “Let’s get a little closer to the second base camp.”

The bill would seek to add more of the workforce by forgiving student loans for nurses and others already working in the healthcare sector, in addition to the loan forgiveness granted to current students in last year’s law. It would also seek to make it easier to apply for and renew work permits, to recruit workers from other states and countries, and to ease training requirements for workers licensed in other states.

“Human resources are our biggest challenge,” said Mary Margaret Oliver, the Decatur Democrat who is the other co-sponsor.

The measure would also seek to make it easier for officers to take advantage of a form of court-ordered outpatient treatment created last year. It would create new crisis stabilization units in Columbus, Dublin and the Atlanta area, and mandate greater data sharing between agencies to help investigate problems and plan services.

Last year’s measure prompted private insurers to conform to long-standing federal requirements to provide the same level of benefits for mental health disorders as for physical illnesses. It also required publicly funded insurance programs to spend more on patient care and approved loan forgiveness. The law also allowed law enforcement officers to take someone they believe is in need of mental health treatment to an emergency facility for evaluation.

Funding for the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities was increased by $180 million this year. Sponsors have said they expect more spending in the budget beginning July 1, particularly in terms of how much Medicaid pays for care. That, in turn, could allow Medicaid providers to raise wages for workers.

The bill would require a series of studies, including one that would look at the available beds for inpatient mental health care in the state.

“We don’t know what kind of beds we have,” Jones said. “We don’t know the workforce that aligns with that bed. We don’t know the prices. We don’t know the conditions and we need to know that.”

The Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Division would need to provide district coordinators to reduce the number of people ending up in prisons during a mental health crisis.

This mental health agency would also need to develop best practices to help people who frequently switch between prison, health care providers and homelessness. Behavioral health screening programs would be made available to prisons, and efforts would be made to connect people exiting prison to community mental health programs.

“Many people in our correctional system aren’t inherently wrongdoers, they’re just sick,” said Rep. Gregg Kennard, a Lawrenceville Democrat.

In the meantime, the state would ensure that such people can qualify for housing despite criminal records and seek to increase the supportive housing available to such patients.

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Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.