Political Quotes

“today Senators Toomey and Collins and I are introducing the Improving Access to Emergency Psychiatric Care Act of 2015, which will build on the current 3-year Medicaid Emergency Psychiatric Demonstration Project to provide timely and cost-effective treatment to people who are experiencing an emergency psychiatric crisis. We know that emergency psychiatric care delivered in general hospitals and freestanding psychiatric hospitals is a life-saving service for individuals with severe mental illnesses. In addition, a Government Accountability Office report, GAO-09-347, on hospital emergency departments concluded the difficulties in transferring, admitting, or discharging psychiatric patients from the emergency department contribute to overcrowding in our Nation's emergency rooms. Community-based psychiatric hospitals, like Sheppard Pratt Health System in my home State of Maryland, could help relieve these back-ups in emergency departments; however, due to a longstanding Medicaid statutory provision called the Institution for Mental Disease, IMD, exclusion, patients receiving care in these freestanding psychiatric hospitals are not covered if the patients are between the ages of 21 and 64, and the hospitals cannot get Medicaid Federal matching payments for these services.…”